And he left us, back bowed. I kept my face firmly expressionless as I undressed, so as to give Thomas no opportunity to talk. Personally I couldn’t get worked up about it all. For one thing, Fulbert wasn’t a priest. And anyway, why shouldn’t a priest have sex if he felt like it? And as for him doing it on the sly, poor devil, that was his misfortune that he felt he had to.
I really bore Fulbert not the slightest grudge for having sneaked Miette away from us for a night. I fully intended to use the incident against him quite shamelessly the next day, but for quite other reasons: because I was quite certain that he was a man without an ounce of human kindness or justice in his heart, who wished Malevil no good, and in whose teeth I was determined to restore Malevil’s unity. The unity in which this question of religion had so very nearly succeeded in producing a rift that evening.
The lamp out, I got into bed, though as I fully expected, not to sleep. Thomas couldn’t drop off either. I could hear him turning this way and that on his sofa. He did make one attempt to open a conversation, but I fended it off with an irritable outburst. If I was to be denied sleep, at least let me have peace and quiet.
CHAPTER TEN
After breakfast, while Fulbert was receiving the penitents in “his” room, I set off toward the Maternity Ward in order to saddle Malabar and continue his training. Despite all my efforts, I was still a long way from having transformed our great carthorse into a good mount. His mouth was not very sensitive, he responded to the signals of the aids only when he chose, and stopping him was not easy. I was also hindered by the breadth of his back, which obliged me to spread my thighs wider than I was used to and consequently weakened my knee grip. And he was so heavy, that Malabar, that when I was on him I felt like a knight in the Middle Ages. All I needed was a suit of armor. And I felt sure that that wouldn’t bother him either. Vast as he was, he was quite capable of carrying two or three times my weight. He had incredible reserves of strength, and when he galloped I always had the feeling that we were charging. Moreover, though I was staggered by the sheer width of that back I had no criticism to make of its comfort. You felt really solid and safe up there, and if it were a matter of making some long expedition where speed was not of the essence, then I would certainly have recommended Malabar to anyone with a sensitive behind.
I found Jacquet and Momo already there mucking out the stalls, and just as I was about to start saddling Malabar I noticed that Momo had once again given Bel Amour twice as much straw as the other two horses. Not that the others had been stinted; it was just that Bel Amour had too much. I bawled Momo out and made him take half the straw out again, making him feel ashamed of his favoritism, because it was also a criminal waste. I promised him that if he did it again he’d get my boot in his bottom.
This threat was a purely routine measure. It had been inherited from my uncle, and like him I had never actually put it into practice. You might have expected that it would by now have become so abstract as to lose all its efficacy. But no, it still continued to produce a certain effect on Momo as representing the ultimate in parental displeasure. Because, although Momo was several years older than myself, he had accepted that in inheriting my uncle’s material possessions I had also inherited Uncle Samuel’s paternal powers over him.
While I was giving Momo his dressing-down I visited each of the stalls, as I did every morning, to check that the automatic water troughs were working properly. Another of our strokes of luck: if the water system at Malevil hadn’t been gravity fed and we had to depend on an electric pump, the bomb would have deprived us of our water supply for good and all.
When I went into Amarante’s stall she immediately began her usual morning flirtation, butting into my back with her head, pushing her damp nostrils against the back of my neck, and nibbling at one sleeve. If God had given her hands she would have tickled me. At the same time, out of the corner of one eye, she was watching the progress of a hen that had come pecking its way in through the door I had left ajar. Fortunately I too saw the hen just in time, and before Amarante could slaughter it with one deft blow of a hoof, I distracted her with a resounding slap on her hindquarters and quickly pushed the poor feathered imbecile out of the stall with my foot. I glanced in at Fulbert’s big gray donkey, or rather at his water bucket, because he had been put in the only stall not fitted with a trough.
With my tour duly accomplished, I gathered up in my palm—or rather in the palm of my old glove, because I have a healthy respect for that great pointed beak—a few grains of barley. And immediately—How did he know that the moment had come? And where was he hiding the moment before?—our crow sailed down from nowhere and landed at my feet. After walking circumspectly all around me in his favorite pose, imitating an ancient humpbacked miser with his hands clasped behind his back, he flew up onto my left shoulder and began pecking at the grain in my palm, without for an instant ceasing to stare sideways into my face with one glittering eye. His meal over, he still saw no reason to leave my shoulder, even when I went into the stall to saddle up Malabar. Malabar and not Amarante, you notice, because Craa had never been known to venture an inch inside Amarante’s box. That too I found amazing. How did he know that my Amarante, so gentle with any human, was a killer when it came to birds?
As I was putting in Malabar’s bit (while Craa strutted up and down his broad back), La Menou arrived to milk Noiraude and began lamenting from the next stall, without being able to see me, about the lack of help she received. I pointed out to her that La Falvine and Miette could scarcely do all last night’s dishes in the kitchen and milk a cow in the Maternity Ward at the same time, and that in any case, where cows were concerned, always the same hand on the teat was a good rule. This observation was greeted by a short silence, then from La Menou’s stall there began to emerge a long stream of indistinct but clearly uncomplimentary mutterings in which I could just make out the words “weakness,” “big healthy girl,” and “thighs,” from which I was able to reconstitute the general tenor of her remarks.
I kept quiet, and La Menou moved on, in a louder voice now, to other subjects of complaint. Take for instance how La Falvine, at table in front of me, played at pecking at her plate like a hen. So how could I know that she stuffed her face when no one was looking. (I wondered how that could be possible, since La Menou kept the keys to everything.) And if she went on stuffing herself like that, a bag of lard with more fat than she could carry now, she’d never make old bones. Then a short parenthesis informing me that we would soon be running out of soap and sugar and that we had to ask for some when we took the cow over to La Roque. Then returning to her favorite subject—the imminent demise of La Falvine—La Menou set out to describe it to me in advance: a slow and appalling suffocation of the life force brought on by her own gluttony.
I led Malabar out of his stall, having finished saddling him, and in order to bring La Menou’s necrophiliac recital to an end remarked that as a matter of fact La Falvine was on her way over at that moment. Jacquet, in the next stall, had heard the whole conversation; but he wouldn’t repeat it to La Falvine, I knew that. And there La Falvine was, in fact, chugging along toward me at top speed, partly in order to demonstrate her zeal for work, partly so that she could intercept me for a moment’s gossip before I climbed onto the stallion. After an exchange of greetings, she launched into a brief lament, in which I joined, on the subject of the weather. Ever since the bomb, always this cold gray sky, not a drop of rain, not a gleam of sun. If things went on like this it would be the end of everything. Superfluous words, to say the least, since they were things scarcely ever far from all our thoughts—that absent sun, the rain that never came. It was an underlying dread we had been living with constantly ever since the day it happened.
At that point La Menou appeared and curtly ordered La Falvine to take over the milking. “I’ve done Noiraude,” she told her as cuttingly as she could manage, “but not Princesse. And remember not to take any more than three or four quarts from her. There’s Prince to think of. I
’m going up to see Fulbert now.” And she stalked scornfully off. I watched her as she trotted indomitably away toward the keep, that thin, oh so thin, little bag of bones, and I wondered what sins she could possibly have to confess, our Menou, apart from a few unkind digs at La Falvine.
La Falvine, still huffing and puffing from her recent turn of speed, followed my eyes and said, “La Menou—when you think about it, there’s not much of her. Eighty-five pounds perhaps, and there I’m on the generous side. You might say she doesn’t have a body almost. Take now, just for instance. If she fell ill and the doctor [What doctor?] put her on a diet, what would she live on? And you have to remember she’s not getting younger. Why she’s older than me by six years, and six years at our age, they count, they count. I don’t like to say it, Emmanuel, but even in the time I’ve been here I think she’s sunk a little. You take certain moments, she’s just not there with you, La Menou. You mark what I say now, it’s the head that will go first with her. Take for instance the other day. There I was just chatting to her, and suddenly I realized she just wasn’t there. I could tell it from the way she hadn’t even answered me.”
During this speech, on the pretext of needing to walk Malabar around the enclosure a little, to relax him before his lesson, I drew La Falvine away from the Maternity Ward, because Momo, unlike Jacquet, did repeat things. In fact it was his favorite pastime. He would repeat gossip with embellishments, or rather with exaggerations, while his glittering dark eyes watched for the expression of displeasure to appear on his hearer’s face.
“It won’t be the head that goes first with me at least.” I listened to La Falvine and grunted now and then to let her know I was listening. It wasn’t the first time that each of our housekeepers had announced the other’s approaching end to me. At first it had amused me. But now I had to admit it saddened me. It seemed to me that man must be a strange animal to desire his fellow being’s death so easily.
As I walked up from the gate tower toward the inner enclosure, still leading Malabar, and with La Falvine panting along on my left, determined to keep up with me, I saw Miette crossing the drawbridge, then cutting across in my direction. Those forty yards we had to cross before we met in the middle provided me with a delightful few moments. She was dressed in a faded blue blouse, patched and crumpled, but clean and pleasantly filled out, and beneath it a short skirt of blue woolen material, very much patched likewise, which stopped just above the knee to reveal her bare legs above the black rubber boots. Legs and arms alike were bare, strong, and red. Miette clearly didn’t feel the cold, because I was wearing a turtleneck sweater and a pair of old but thick riding breeches, and I was far from feeling warm. Her luxuriant hair, so similar to her grandmother’s except for its raven blackness, was tumbling in gleaming waves over her shoulders, and her gentle eyes, shining with animal innocence, gazed at me with affection as she came up to me and kissed me on both cheeks, pressing the whole length of her body against mine, not for her own pleasure but solely for mine. I was grateful to her for this act of generosity, because I knew perfectly well, like all the rest of us, that Miette was a stranger to such sensual pleasures. I was sure that if I could have looked into that simple heart of hers I would have found a certain astonishment there, an uncomprehending amazement at this mania that men have for fingering and squeezing the bodies of her sex.
La Falvine made herself scarce with ponderous discreetness, and it was Malabar’s turn to receive his share of caresses from Miette’s hands and lips. I noted in passing, not without envy, that she kissed him on the mouth, a thing she never did with men. Then having distributed her ration of affection, she turned, planted herself in front of me, and the miming began. She informed me to begin with that the (squint and praying hands) and she (thumb pointing to heart) had, as she had expected (forefinger to forehead), made love (gesture better left undescribed). She was indignant (grimace of disgust), especially considering that he was a (praying hands), but what made her even more indignant (grimace of utter revulsion) was that the (squint and praying hands) had suggested to her (both palms held out like a tray) that she go with him (legs walking on spot, right hand clasping an imaginary hand) to La Roque (sweeping gesture with one arm toward the horizon) and work for him (polishing and washing gestures). What knavery (fists on hips, scowl, curling lip, feet stamping snake to death)! She had refused (violent shaking of the head) and walked out (she half turned away, back stiff with hostility, buttocks tense with rage). Did she do right?
Then, when I said nothing, so staggered was I by Fulbert’s audacity, she began going through the last sequence again.
“Oh, yes, Miette, yes, you did absolutely the right thing,” I said, putting my left hand under her beautiful heavy hair and stroking the back of her neck, while with my right I urged Malabar forward again to stop his impatient stamping. Immediately, on the wing as it were, as we both walked along, she began dotting kisses over my cheek, rather randomly because we were moving, and I even thought for a moment that she was going to kiss me on the mouth, as she had Malabar. But no. Suddenly she was off again, going to help in the Maternity Ward, from which I saw La Falvine now re-emerging, moving along like a ball, her vast haunches rolling like a battleship in heavy seas, making for the keep.
It seemed to me that Fulbert had gone too far, and that his visit might well turn out very badly for him before it was over. However, I dismissed all thoughts of that kind from my mind and concentrated on the task in hand. I got up into the saddle and worked Malabar around the enclosure, putting him through his paces, using the leading rein sparingly and concentrating above all on his trot. I wore spurs without rowels, but even so I used them with great moderation; and even when he threatened to stick his heels in, I almost never used the crop, which I knew didn’t hurt him in the slightest, but which he seemed to take as a personal insult. After half an hour I was drenched in sweat, so much sheer physical effort did it involve controlling the enormous creature.
Out of the corner of my eye as I circled the yard I had seen Jacquet set out for the keep, arms swinging by his side, hands half open, great shoulders bent forward. I was tired, and so was Malabar. I dismounted and led him back toward the Maternity Ward.
Colin suddenly appeared, grim faced, and walked after me into the stallion’s stall. As I unbuckled the saddle and bridle and laid them over the top of the partition, he grabbed up a handful of straw from the floor, twisted it into a ring, and without a word began rubbing down Malabar’s sweating flank with suppressed rage. I did likewise, though without the rage, on the other side, glancing at our great bowman now and then over the stallion’s withers, waiting for the explosion. And before long it came; everything poured out. He had seen Meyssonnier and Thomas. They were in the storeroom, inventorying the booty from L’Étang, and Meyssonnier had told him how Miette had spent the night.
I listened. That was my principal function at Malevil, listening. Once the explosion was over, I offered counsels of moderation. I was beginning to be uneasy. Things were going almost too badly for Fulbert. I began to wonder whether I wouldn’t be forced to alleviate his defeat to some extent, so that we could get him off the premises without violence. “Have you seen Peyssou?” I asked.
“No.”
“Well if you do, don’t tell him. You hear, just don’t tell him.”
He agreed with bad grace, then just as I was leaving the stall to hang up the saddle and bridle in the harness room, Fulbert’s big gray donkey began braying fit to split our eardrums. Little Colin pulled himself up on tiptoe and peered over into the donkey’s stall. “Well, well,” he said with deep scorn, “are we taking ourself for a great big stallion in there? Look at him, the great lover with it all hanging down. Do you think our mares are for you, you stupid donkey? And what’s to stop us kicking you into our moat, eh? You and your Mr. Big! Yes, it’s mighty cold, our moat. That would cool your balls down for you!”
I laughed at this preposterous displacement onto the poor donkey, then deliberately prolonged my laugh in
order to remove any conceivable hint of seriousness from the notion. “But anyway,” Colin said, a little calmer now after his little joke, “you can be sure I won’t be going to any confession now!” I gave him a friendly thump on the back, then set off toward the keep in order to change.
On the drawbridge I met La Menou, who was looking rather thoughtful, it seemed to me. I stopped. She raised her little skull-like face toward me, fixed me with her small bright eyes, and said, “Ah, Emmanuel. I was looking for you. I wanted to tell you that after my confession Fulbert was telling me he’s very worried about our spiritual welfare here. And since we certainly can’t get over to La Roque every Sunday, with it being so far, he said he was thinking perhaps he should create an assistant, a vicar, and send him here to live at Malevil.”
I stared at her, flabbergasted.
“I thought it wouldn’t please you too much,” La Menou said.
Not please me too much! Some understatement! I could see only too clearly what lay behind his solicitude. Like Colin’s a little while before, but for a quite different reason, my face was very grim indeed as I climbed the keep’s spiral staircase. As I reached the second floor landing, one of the two doors opened and Fulbert appeared, showing Peyssou out. Jacquet was standing outside the door waiting his turn.
“Good morning, Emmanuel,” Fulbert said with a certain coldness. (He already knew I didn’t intend to make a confession.) “May I see you for a few moments in my room before Mass?”
“I’ll wait for you in mine,” I said. “Next floor up, on the right.”