“Well?” Thomas said in a scarcely audible voice.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Why not?” Thomas’s lips mouthed silently.
“The others.”
Saying that with a certain clarity of thought did me good. I began coughing violently, and the thought came to me that the stupor fogging my brain was perhaps as much due to the smoke I had breathed in as to the terrible moral shock I had undergone. I heaved myself painfully to my feet. “The cellar.”
I tottered back to the entrance of the narrow spiral staircase, without waiting for Thomas, and I climbed, or rather tumbled, back down it. Fortunately, in preparation for the tourists I had been expecting, I had fixed an iron handrail on the wall, and even though it burned my palm horribly, I was able to cling to that whenever my foot missed a step. In the little yard between the keep and the house, Thomas caught up to me and said, “Your horses.” I shook my head to signify no and hurried on, repressing a sob. The thought of seeing them filled me with horror. I knew for certain they must all be dead. I had only one thought: to hide myself away again as quickly as possible in my underground hole.
I shivered as I entered the cellar, so cold did it seem, and my first gesture was to pick up my sweater, throw it over my shoulders, and knot the sleeves around my neck. Colin was drawing wine while Meyssonnier was carrying the bottles over to La Menou for her to cork. I was certain that this activity had been initiated by La Menou, who must have decided that there was no earthly reason not to finish the task she had begun. But whoever’s idea it had been, seeing them busying themselves in that way certainly did me good. I walked over to them, took one of the full bottles, drank, then handed it to Thomas. Despite my shivering, the sweat was still streaming down my face, and I used one of the sleeves of my sweater to wipe it. Then I leaned against a cask, and very gradually I felt my thoughts ordering themselves once more in my mind.
After a few moments I became aware that my companions were frozen into the most complete immobility, staring at me silently with an expression of anguish and even of supplication. They obviously already knew what had happened, but none of them had the courage to ask me any questions. Only La Menou, I could see, really wanted to hear me speak. But she too refrained from questioning me, her eyes fixed on the others, aware what my persistent silence meant for them.
I can’t say how long it lasted. In the end I must have felt it was less cruel to speak than to go on saying nothing, and in a quiet voice, looking directly at them, I said, “We didn’t go far. Just to the top of the keep.”
With my throat dry, I went on: “It’s just as you thought. There’s nothing left.”
They were expecting it, and yet as soon as I spoke, it was as though I had poleaxed them. The only one who reacted was Peyssou. Eyes starting from his head, he staggered three steps toward me, clenched his fists onto the sleeves of my sweater, and shouted very loudly, “It’s not true!”
I didn’t answer. I hadn’t the heart. Instead, taking hold of his clenched fists, I tried to disengage them from the sleeves of the sweater. As I pulled at his fingers, the sleeves parted, revealing the binoculars still hanging around my neck. Peyssou noticed them, recognized them, and his eyes remained glued to them in horror. At that moment, I am certain, the whole of that afternoon we had spent on the keep parapet identifying the farms flashed before his eyes. An expression of despair appeared on his face, his hands released their hold, and leaning his head forward onto my shoulder, he began weeping with huge gulping sobs, like a child.
There was a swift bustle in the cellar immediately, a series of movements performed in unison, even though no signals were exchanged, which produced an emotion that affected me deeply and was, I believe, decisive in restoring my wish to live. I put my arms around big Peyssou (he was almost half a head taller than me), and immediately Colin and Meyssonnier were on either side of him, one with a hand on his shoulder, the other with an arm around his neck, attempting in their simple and manly way to quiet him down. I was staggered to see them, those two who had themselves lost everything, lavishing their consolations on our friend. At the same time, I don’t know why, I remembered that the last time Colin and I had held Peyssou so tightly was when we were twelve, to keep him still so that Meyssonnier could “stuff his great trap shut.” But this memory, far from diminishing my emotion, in fact increased it. There we were, the three of us, clustered around our great shaggy bear, talking to him, squeezing him, hitting him on the back, muttering friendly insults at him. “Come on, you great ninny, that’s enough now.”
To which he replied through his tears, and gratefully, “Oh, bugger off, the lot of you. I don’t need all this!”
The sobs slowly eased off and we moved away from him slightly.
“We must go and take a look though,” Meyssonnier said, face pale, eyes hollow.
“Yes,” Colin said with a tremendous effort, “we must go and see.”
But neither of them made a move.
“I don’t know if you’ll be able to get through,” Thomas said. “The woods haven’t stopped burning yet. And from here to Malejac it’s woods all the way, on both sides. Not to mention radioactivity. Because, after all, the courtyard is very protected. The risk exists.”
“Risk?” Peyssou said, raising his head from his hands. “What have I got to live for anyway?”
There was a silence.
“What about us?” I said, looking at him hard.
Peyssou shrugged his shoulders, opened his mouth, changed his mind, and said nothing. His shoulders were saying something different from his silence. They were telling us, There’s just no comparison. But he kept quiet because he knew all the same that we did count for something.
La Menou entered the debate then. Her intervention did not take the habitual form of a monologue delivered in a quiet voice for her own benefit and only secondarily directed at others, or of a swift comment in patois deftly inserted into the conversation. She made what was for her a long speech, and she made it in French—in itself proof of the importance she attached to it—yet without taking her hands off her corker.
“My boy,” she said to Peyssou, “it is not for us to say whether we are going to live or die. If we are alive, then that’s so we can carry on. Life is like work. It’s not worth it unless you do the job properly. It’s no good just leaving off when it starts to get difficult.”
Having said that, she pulled down the lever of her machine and a cork slid noiselessly into a bottle. Peyssou looked at her, opened his mouth, then again changed his mind and said nothing. I thought La Menou had finished, but she inserted another bottle under the corker and went on: “You’re thinking now, La Menou, she can talk, she hasn’t lost anything, she has her Momo. Which is true in a way. But even if I had lost Momo [she took her hand off the lever and crossed herself] I would never say what you said just then. You’re alive because you’re alive, my boy. No good looking further than that. Death is no friend to man, not ever.”
“You’re right, old mother,” Colin said.
And indeed, given her age, she could have been our mother, though no one till then had given it a thought.
“Come on,” Meyssonnier said and made a few stiff steps toward the door.
I intercepted him and took him to one side. “The both of you, you and Colin,” I said in a very low voice, “try not to leave Peyssou alone. You know why. The best thing would be for you all to stay together all the time.”
“That’s what I thought too,” Meyssonnier said.
Thomas now came over as well, his Geiger counter in his hand. “I’m coming with you,” he told Meyssonnier, just as Colin with Peyssou behind him joined the group.
They all three stopped and looked at him.
“There’s no reason why you should come, Thomas,” Colin said to him, apparently unaware that this was the first time he had ever addressed him by his first name.
“You’ll need me though,” Thomas said, holding up the counter.
There was a
pause, then Meyssonnier said in a throaty voice, “We’ll take Germain’s body out with us. We’ll leave it by the gate of the outer wall until we can find time to bury him.”
I scarcely thanked him, but I felt the greatest gratitude toward him for having thought of Germain at a time when he was in such distress on his own account. I watched them leave. Thomas went first, his headphones around his neck ready to be slipped on, the counter held out in front of him. Meyssonnier and Peyssou followed, carrying Germain with evident difficulty. Colin brought up the rear, looking even more tiny and frail than ever.
The door closed behind them and I stood there in front of it without moving, distressed at the thought of their mission and wondering whether I ought not to go with them.
“There are no full bottles left to cork,” La Menou said calmly from behind me. “Perhaps you could fill some more for me.”
I went back to my stool, sat down, and began drawing the wine again. I was very hungry, but I wasn’t going to set an example of undisciplined indulgence by claiming owner’s rights to my own hams. La Menou had taken charge of provisions, and she had been right to do so. She would always be fair, that was beyond doubt.
“Come on, Momo,” she said, seeing that I would soon have no empty bottles left.
And as Momo got to his feet and began filling a crate she added in the same quiet voice, but in a very firm tone, “And try not to drink any on the way over, because now when you drink more than your share you’re taking it from the others.”
I imagined that Momo would remain wholly deaf to this exhortation, but I was wrong. He had heard it and he respected it. Or perhaps it was simply his mother’s tone of voice he was reacting to.
“You were very sparing earlier on with the ham,” I said to La Menou after a moment. “I wasn’t exactly happy to see them leave with empty bellies.” Then with a gesture toward the ceiling I added, “Especially with all the ham and sausages that are here.”
“There are seven of us,” La Menou answered, following my gesture with her eyes, “and when everything hanging there is finished, there’s no saying we shall ever eat pig again. Or drink wine. Or ever bring in another harvest.”
I looked across at her. She was seventy-seven, La Menou. She had already envisaged with the utmost clarity the prospect of possible death from hunger, yet her will to live remained unimpaired.
The door of the cellar opened suddenly and Thomas’s head appeared around it. With what for him was almost violent emotion, he cried, “Emmanuel! You have some animals still alive!”
He vanished again. I stood up open-mouthed, wondering if I’d heard him correctly. La Menou was on her feet too. She stared at me, then said in patois, as though not sure whether she had understood Thomas’s French aright; “Did he say there are animals still alive?”
“Momo ook!” her son cried, and he set off at a run toward the door.
“Wait, wait! Wait for me, I tell you!” La Menou shouted as she trotted after him as fast as she could. She looked like a little old mouse with her thin little shanks flickering to and fro. I heard Momo’s hobnailed boots clanging up the stone stairs. Then I began running too. I passed La Menou and caught up with Momo just as he was crossing the drawbridge to the outer enclosure. There was no sign of Thomas and the other three. Thomas must have hurried back to bring the news, then sprinted off again to catch up with them on the Malejac road.
As we approached we were greeted by a medley of whinnies, bellows, and grunts, all rather faint. They were coming from the cave that Birgitta had nicknamed the Maternity Ward.
I sprinted for all I was worth, passed Momo, and reached the cave completely out of breath, streaming with sweat, my heart banging against my ribs. The animals there, in the separate stalls built at the back of the cave, were Bel Amour, Momo’s adored fourteen-year-old mare, about to foal at any moment; Princesse, one of La Menou’s Dutch cows in the same condition; and my own filly, Amarante, still too young to be serviced, but in temporary confinement in the Maternity Ward because she had been cribbing. And lastly an enormous sow, also on the point of farrowing, whom La Menou—without my permission, though that didn’t bother her—had given the name of Adelaide.
All four animals had suffered a great deal. They were lying on their sides, clearly very weak, breathing with difficulty, but nevertheless still alive, thanks to the depth and coolness of the cave. I was unable to get near Bel Amour, because Momo had already hurled himself on her neck, rolling beside her in her droppings and whinnying with love. But Amarante, whose head was lying on the straw, managed to raise it when I came into her stall, and she pushed her nostrils toward my fingers to sniff at them. When La Menou appeared she didn’t even stop to scold Momo for dirtying his clothes in the dung. She was far too busy inspecting Princesse, feeling her belly and sympathizing with her. (“There now, poor old thing, poor old thing.”) Then she went in to see the sow, though without getting too close to her, on account of her notorious viciousness.
I checked the automatic water troughs. The water was hot, but they were still working.
“Momo hetch hum harley!” Momo said, and he began climbing the ladder up to the floor above where I stored my hay.
“No, no!” La Menou cried after him. “No barley! Bran with water and wine for all of them. And look at you, you great ninny,” she added. “Look at your pants covered in muck, now you’ll be stinking worse than Adelaide herself!”
I stepped away from Amarante and found the courage to leave the Maternity Ward to inspect the stalls outside. The smell told me all I needed to know before I got there, and I pressed my handkerchief over my nose, so suffocating was the foul smell. All the animals were dead, not burned to death but suffocated by the heat. Being built against the cliff itself, the line of stalls had been protected by it and had not caught fire. But the great flat stones covering them must have been heated to a tremendous temperature, because the beams beneath—all solid oak salvaged from the old buildings, and as hard as iron—had been scorched dark brown, on the surface at least.
La Menou returned with two bottles of wine, mixed it with water and made a bran mash that she divided up into four big bowls. I went back into Amarante’s stall, where she was still lying on her side, took a handful of the mash, and held it under her nose. She sniffed at it, blew on it through her nostrils, then curled back her lips with distaste and listlessly attempted to nibble at it. When she had finished I took a second handful and held that out too. She ate very little, and infinitely slowly. It struck me as being rather ironical, since I myself was so hungry I was almost ready to eat the bran that she was turning her nose up at. With one ear I could follow the alternating insults and endearments that Momo was showering on Bel Amour next door in an attempt to make her eat, and in quieter counterpoint the encouragements La Menou was lavishing on Princesse. As for Adelaide, La Menou had contented herself with simply pushing the bowl under her nose, and to judge from the noises she was making, the sow was the only one of the quartet doing full justice to her meal.
“How is it going, Menou?” I asked, raising my voice.
“Not good. What about you?”
“Not so good either. Momo?”
“Hyupid, hyupid ’el Amour!” (Stupid, stupid Bel Amour!)
“It’s because we can’t explain to them,” La Menou said. “Talking and common sense, they’re useful things when all’s said and done. Look at my Princesse now. Hungry, yes she’s hungry, but she’s so weak the poor thing doesn’t even know she’s hungry.”
Squatting on my heels, feet almost numb by now, I was still waiting for Amarante to finish toying with her second handful of mash. And I found myself murmuring the same tender insults at her as the others. I was under no illusions. These four animals were the condition of our survival. Even the horses, since no plowing was going to be possible without them now that supplies of gas and diesel fuel had dried up forever.
Amarante was by now refusing every mouthful I tried to coax down her. She had let her muzzle sink to the g
round again and lay in an attitude of exhausted resignation that didn’t augur at all well. I got hold of her forelock and forced her to hold up her head while I held out the mash in the palm of my other hand. Still without attempting to take it, she gazed at me vaguely with her great sad eyes, as though to say, Can’t you leave me alone? Why torment me like this?
La Menou, incapable of staying in one place, was trotting to and fro, her feet clacking firm and sharp on the stone, visiting the sow, trotting back to Princesse, and soliloquizing nonstop, for my benefit as well as her own.
“Just look at that great slut Adelaide, already finished her mash, so now I can give her some real feed. Fair play to them, they’re tough as old boots, pigs are. When I think of the cows I’ve lost or nearly lost in calf. And all those horses just from a handful of fresh lucerne or a few yew twigs. It’s always their stomachs that are the death of horses, and with cows it’s their bellies. But you just try doing away with that great sow! Just from the number of teats on her you can see what a strong beast she is. She’s so solid you’d say she was a monument. And she drops those piglets of hers by the dozen, without any help from anyone. Sixteen she gave me once, sixteen!”
I was very worried about Amarante, but listening to La Menou—so everyday, so at ease with these familiar animals and things, chattering on as though nothing had happened—did a great deal for my morale. Momo was having more success with Bel Amour than I was with Amarante. I could tell as much from the way his anger and his threats had gradually given way to endearments and little whinnies.
La Menou poked her head through the stall door. “All right, Emmanuel?”
“No, far from it.”
She inspected Amarante. “I’ll fetch her some wine and sugar water. You look after Princesse.”