A King Alone Read online

  Suddenly there was no more talk of Marie Chazottes this, Marie Chazottes that! It wasn’t just Marie Chazottes but also Ravanel Georges (he’d escaped by a hairsbreadth), and therefore also you or me, anyone and everyone, the whole village was threatened! And an exceedingly dark Sunday night was beginning to fall on it. The people who had no shotguns (there are widows with families) spent a truly miserable night. In fact, those families in which there were very young children and no men went to spend the night in houses where there were solid men and weapons. Especially in the Pelousères neighborhood.

  Bergues kept watch and spent the night going from house to house. So many snifters and glasses of mulled wine had warmed him that he returned royally plastered. He played the commanding officer tirelessly, knocking on all the doors, scaring the wits out of roomfuls of women and children and even men who, since nightfall, had been holding their breath and watching the paint dry. Twenty times he almost got a faceful of buckshot. At last, drunk as a skunk, he stayed the night at Ravanel’s, while Ravanel, having finished off the poor pig, spent his time making it into sausages and black pudding in order to take his mind off things and, chiefly, so as not to waste anything.

  You have to forgive Bergues, a bachelor who’s a bit wild; he doesn’t really know how to control himself in matters of drink or anything else, but at Ravanel’s, either from excitement, exhaustion, or alcohol, he began to say some strange things; for example, “blood, blood on snow, so clean, red and white, it was very beautiful.” (I am thinking of the sleeping, hypnotized Perceval: Opium? Tobacco? The aspirin of the century of the bourgeois aviator hypnotized by the blood of wild geese on the snow.)

  This little unmooring of Bergues’s, who immediately afterwards, by the way, became the placid, pipe-smoking philosopher Bergues again, even somewhat more lethargic than usual, went unnoticed at first; those who were there and who would remember it in the end, simply and instinctively made a mental note of it. In any event, there was one thing that the village could not ignore and the full significance of which became extremely clear the next day: while the snow continued to fall (it was an awful winter), everyone remained under the same threat.

  As I said, it was no longer Marie Chazottes this or that; there had been Ravanel Georges, the scarf around the face, the footprints going up Le Jocond into the clouds; there had been that . . . oh, yes! that man skulking about on that infamous Sunday morning around ten o’clock, looking (for what, exactly?), and who, after all, had spent his time in a very unsavory way with Ravanel’s pig before trying to snatch our Georges.

  No one doubted it for a second! Marie Chazottes had been snatched with the scarf. Strangling Georges could prove difficult, as we’ve seen (though it was a close call), but our Marie? Two pinches of pepper, light as a feather, and who could turn a waltz on a small plate, dust! It must have happened in the twinkling of an eye.

  Once his jag had passed, Bergues went home. Widows or no widows, you still had to go home. The first night is fine, but you can’t camp out at other people’s places forever. If people are afraid, they need to stuff a rock in their pocket. And people were afraid.

  From time to time the snow stops falling. The cloud lifts. Instead of slicing the weathervane just below the arrow, it now slices it only at the tip, or even reveals the tip, breaking up into little flakes on the point. Enough. You can see the extraordinarily white desert all the way to the edge of the extraordinarily dark woods, in which there could be anything, anything capable of anything. Night falls. A slight wind stirs that no one hears. What people do hear is something like a hand brushing against the shutters, the door, or the wall; a moaning or a whistling like a lament, or its opposite. A noise in the attic.

  Everyone is listening. Father is no longer pulling on his pipe. Mother holds her handful of salt suspended above the soup. They look at each other. At us. Father lets out a sigh, dispelling a wisp of smoke with it. We need the noise to start up again. We are on the lookout, so that we can evaluate the noise in an instant: dangerous or not. But nothing, only silence. We don’t know. Indecision. Anything’s possible. We can’t tell. Father’s wisp of smoke grows longer and longer. Grain by grain, Mother drops her cooking salt into the soup: plop, plop, plop.

  The shotgun is on the table. Mother raises her hand above the pot and the whole handful of salt slides into the soup. It’s five o’clock. Another seventeen hours to wait before a gray dawn appears. Outside, a supple stirring. Long willow branches freeing themselves of the weight of the snow? Usually you can tell. Could it be? . . . Is it? . . . Yes? No? No. Snow gently fluttering down again, a quivering in the thatch, the muffled crunch of footsteps in straw.

  Jewel stamps her feet in the cowshed, ah! The animals have to be fed. Leave the woman alone. Go down below alone. If only the lad were twenty . . . and even so, what good would it do? Georges was twenty. You would need two or three strapping boys. He says, “Come, let’s go feed the horse.” It’s just down below. You get there by an indoor stairway.

  It’s the hour when the horses in the stables all stamp their feet. Here, Mother lights the lantern. Next door, another woman; farther along, another. In all the houses people are beginning to stir to feed the animals. A sort of commotion groans through the walls with the sounds of feet shuffling and lanterns jingling, like suddenly very comforting words.

  Here, just as next door, just as up and down the entire street, just as throughout the little streets of the entire village, just as in all those detached houses in the Pelousères neighborhood, the huge stables are vaulted, all touching one another, pressing against each other, not only with their pillars but also with their main walls, the keystones that slot together vault after vault without niggling about who the owner is: Tom, Dick, or Harry; but throughout the entire village there is an underground mingling of noises from bridles, stall partitions, bleating, horseshoes, pitchforks, water buckets, sweatings, troughs, words, names of animals—Jewel, Racer, Rusty, Gray Girl—all with the good feeling that being surrounded by vaulted caves gives to human things. These caves were the first armor and this evening they provide magnificent protection. Yes, one would need many children, male children, and big males at that, and one would need to dwell in these vaulted stables, these caves where one feels completely sheltered; not in those straight walls up there, those corners like cardboard, so unsolid, so unserious, so very 1843, so modern; while outside in the time that is not modern but eternal, eternal threats roam. What’s good is the vault, the warmth of the animals, the smell of the animals, the sound of the jaw chewing straw: seeing the big beautiful bellies of placid beasts. It’s here, truly, that it feels like family and humanity; Father has left his rifle leaning against the stall, and Mother strokes little sister’s hair.

  (And too bad for the people who don’t understand and say, “They are oafs, sodbusters.” Sooner or later, life will see to making them understand. There are plenty of scarf-wielding killers out there, slicers of blood hieroglyphs; plenty of 1843 winters; plenty of seasons, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds, and even hundredths of seconds with names that will suddenly turn not only their minds but also their sorry asses into sod. At last they will understand, without it having to be spelled out for them, that nothing has ever been or ever will be invented that is better than a vault. While all around the nakedness and the solitude, the prowler prowls.)

  But they had to go back up. The peddler may come only once a year, but he leaves enough twopenny Veillée des Chaumières papers that even here everyone knows about Marshal Prim, Garibaldi, and the demands of freedom. Already, everywhere, one cannot remain ignorant of one’s time. One must prefer fear to the vault.

  Once again the shotgun is placed within reach on the table, next to the soup bowl. The shutters are closed, the door barricaded. You can’t see the night. All you know is that it’s snowing again. You breathe as quietly as possible so not to miss any of the sounds the rest of the world is making, to be able to interpret them, know whence they come: if it’s the willow branch cra
cking now beneath a new freeze; if it’s the paper pasted over a broken windowpane that’s thrumming or banging; if it’s the latch shivering, a girder moaning, rats scampering.

  Another fifteen hours to wait.

  Naturally, waiting . . . waiting . . . spring comes. Same as always. Spring arrived. You know how it is: a gray season, pastures like fox fur, eggshell snow on the pines, sudden rays of sun the color of oil, winds that cut like sheet metal, water, mud, runoff, every path shiny like slug slime. The days grow longer and one evening (already it stays light until six o’clock) all it takes is a puff of north wind for one to hear, like a sizzling, the sounds of the schools letting out in Saint-Maurice: all those children released into the golden light and the air bubbling like seltzer water.

  The tip of the steeple above the weathervane had been visible again for quite some time; visible again were Bernard’s meadows, the clearings, La Plainie, Le Jocond. Again one could see that though the trails that ascend Le Jocond might be steep, they do not reach the clouds: there is sky. A lovely, gentian-colored sky, more and more spotless every day, smoother every day, covering more and more of the villages, the mountainsides, the tangle of peaks and ridges. Perhaps even a bit too much sky . . .

  Marie Chazottes! Obviously one thought about her, but there’s everything else. One thought about her because she hadn’t been found. The truth is, if she had been found, she would have been buried in the cemetery; that is, one would have thought about her for an entire day, once and for all, as it should be, and afterwards, come what may, all would be as it should be. But Bergues, no matter how he roamed about, inspecting, and even sniffing as soon as it turned a little warmer: nothing. The little valleys, isolated or not, smelled of holy grass, hay, and curds.

  So she had to be mourned. Mourned by Mother Chazottes in any case, who no longer knew how to act. Where to take the flowers? What to do? What to do to what? Where was Marie? Whether on a journey, at her cousin’s, somewhere else, or working as a servant in Grenoble, it was all the same! That’s what Mother Chazottes seemed to be saying with her flabbergasted expression and her dangling arms as she was faced with spring that, this time around, gave nothing up (as it often does when people go missing in winter). All kidding aside, Mother Chazottes was being eaten alive by an unprecedented grief, and no one could console her.

  •

  Now we need to speak about one of the Frédérics. The grandfather. Let’s call him Frédéric II, because the sawmill began working with Frédéric I and continued under Frédéric II, Frédéric III, and now, Frédéric IV. Let’s talk about the second one.

  He took advantage of spring to clean out his reaches, which smelled. He climbed a hundred meters above the wheel, diverted the canal into the mountain stream, and, with his two Piedmontese bulls, began to mow the grasses and shovel huge cakes of black mud that reeked to high heaven. But he had no fear of odors.

  “You’re stinking us out,” Bergues said to him.

  “Ah! What do you expect, it has to be done,” answered Frédéric II.

  And, amazingly, it was Frédéric II and Bergues who said (was it the one or the other who said it first? did they say it together?), “It’s nothing but manure. You should, or I should, put some at the base of the beech tree. It will do it good.”

  They thought of the beech tree very naturally because it was (and still is) near the canal. And especially because it was the most beautiful beech tree ever seen.

  In the spring, it’s a god! With its thick coat of buds covering it like the hide of one of those great golden bulls from the time before the vaults.

  And they piled up that stinking mud against the base of the beech; all four of them: the two Piedmontese bulls, Frédéric II, and my man Bergues, who was lent a shovel. So much for the two bulls, about whom we shall never speak again; as for Frédéric II and my man Bergues, take note. Take note of what they did in that spring of 1844, during the first warm weather, when all the small valleys smell of holy grass; after that winter of ’43 during which Marie Chazottes was the first to disappear.

  The summer was a stormy one. One storm in particular was so sudden and violent that the water flooding into the well-cleaned canal almost carried off the sawmill paddle wheel. And one day when the thunder had again begun to roar, as soon as the raindrops started to pelt the ground like coins, Frédéric II ran up to the sluice gate to divert the water into the drainage canal. He’d just had the time to take care of his business and started running back through the already very heavy squalls, thickets of lightning, and dense shadows when he noticed a man taking shelter beneath the beech. He shouted at him to come in, but the man didn’t seem to hear. It’s childish; you don’t take shelter under a tree during a storm, especially not a tree with the stature and span of that divine beech, and especially not during one of the storms around here, which are terrifyingly violent. Nonetheless, from the shelter of his shed, Frédéric II could see that unnatural man leaning against the trunk of the beech in a very peaceful, even carefree way; in a kind of obvious contentment as if he were warming his spats by the kitchen fireplace. Frédéric said to himself, “He’s some poor chump from who knows where.” He was thinking of those peddlers who come here during summer to restock farm equipment and hawk their new machines. Finally, since the storm was only growing fiercer, water streaming down the walls, a few thunderclaps having exploded close by, he said to himself, “It’s crazy to leave that guy over there. Can’t he see there’s shelter over here?” Placing a sack on his head like a hood, he ran to the tree, took the man by the arm, and said, “Come on, you brainsick fool!” He pulled at him, and it was high time. Ears ringing from the storm, they fled the first shed and went straight to the gear shed.

  “Well! See what I mean?” said Frédéric II.

  “Yes indeed,” said the man.

  “Hey, where are you from?” said Frédéric II.

  “Chichiliane,” said the man.

  At the time, you know, Chichiliane or Marseille, or the pope—it’s all the same. And later, Chichiliane is not much either, because maybe in Chichiliane people are a little stupider than they are here; that’s generally the case. For Frédéric II that was enough to explain why the man had stayed under the beech. Because the man had in fact heard the first call; he said so quite frankly. Also, he’d seen the sawmill shed ten meters behind him: he wasn’t blind. But, you know, there are timid people and even stupid people. Frédéric II thought the man was stupid.

  You’ve never had the chance to see Frédéric II’s portrait? There’s one at Frédéric IV’s place. Right away you can see he’s a man who believes in the stupidity of others.

  He didn’t question the man from Chichiliane; he only wondered if his sluice gate would hold. He didn’t look at him either. Yet for more than an hour they stayed crouched in the tiny gear shed, so close that their shoulders and arms touched.

  Afterwards we had beautiful weather. I say “we”; naturally I wasn’t there because all that happened in 1843, but I had to put my heart and soul into the whole thing and ask so many questions to get to the bottom of it that I ended up being part of it; and besides, I imagine it was one of those sumptuous falls you and I know.

  I suppose you know where fall begins? It begins exactly 235 paces from the tree marked M 312; I’ve counted.

  Have you been up the La Croix pass? See that trail that goes to Lake Lauzon? At the spot where it crosses the mountain-goat meadow, the slope is very steep; you pass by two fairly ugly crevasses of fallen rocks; you come up the vertical western face of Le Ferrand. It’s a mineral landscape, perfectly telluric: gneiss, porphyry, sandstone, serpentine, rotting schist. Sharp crags cutting off every vista, the jagged peaks of Lus, canines, molars, incisors, dog teeth, lion teeth, tiger teeth, carnivorous fish teeth. From there, on your left, a trail toward the narrow chimneys in the side of Le Ferrand: skiing, panoramas. To your right, barely perceptible tracks in the pulverized rock covered with diatomaceous earth. Follow those tracks around the escarpment and, in the hol
low like a glazed earthenware bowl, you’ll find the highest forest squaring, maybe two hundred trees with, on the northern edge, an ash tree marked at least M 312. And right there, some 235 paces away, stuck directly in the sloping bowl, there’s another ash tree. That’s where fall begins.

  It’s instantaneous. Was there some watchword uttered last night while you had your back to the sky as you stirred your soup? This morning, you open your eyes and see my ash tree with a plume of golden parrot feathers on its skull. By the time you’ve made your coffee and gathered up everything you scatter around you when you sleep outside, it’s not just a single plume but a whole helmet fashioned out of the rarest feathers: pink, gray, rust. Then it’s slings, belts, and straps, lanyards, epaulettes, aprons, and breastplates that the tree hangs from himself and sticks everywhere on him; and all this is made out of the most gleaming ruby red that the world has to offer. Well, there he is decked out in his armor, done up in all the trimmings of a warrior priest, rattling his little noisemakers of dry wood.

  Not to be outdone, the M 312 ash dons amices, honey-colored cassocks, bishops’ albs, blazon-covered stoles, and playing-card kings. The larch trees cover themselves in capuchins and shepherd’s cloaks of marmot fur; the maples put on red gaiters, slip on Zouave pantaloons, envelop themselves in executioners’ capes, and cover their heads with Borgia berets. And by the time all that’s done, the mountain-goat meadows are already blue with autumn crocuses. On the way back, when you reach the top of the La Croix pass, you find yourself face-to-face with the first sunset of the season, a kaleidoscope of crazy colors streaking the sky walls; next you see, down below, a grassy hollow that was nothing but hay when you went by two or three days ago, and now it has become a bronze crater guarded by Indians, Aztecs, blood kneaders, gold beaters, ocher miners, popes, cardinals, bishops, knights of the forest; mixed in are tiaras, bonnets, helmets, skirts, painted flesh, embroidered cloths, fall foliage, ash trees, beech trees, maples, shadberries, elms, larch trees, sycamores, oaks, and the black-green of the fir trees that ennobles all the other colors.