“And how has he kept alive all this time then?” Jacquet asked. “What’s he been eating?”
Another pitying shrug from Peyssou. “He hasn’t been eating, of course! He’s been asleep.”
Peyssou was quite right, it seemed to me. It was true that around here, where the cold was never really intense and some food was usually available, the badger didn’t really hibernate any more. But it must nevertheless have conserved the faculty of dozing off in its hole when food was short, of living thriftily off its own fat until better times returned.
Council of war. In the old days we used to content ourselves with a slow fire on the edge of the field to keep badgers away. But that method somehow lacked the element of revenge we needed. Because we didn’t just want to keep the verminous creature away, we wanted its skin. The peasant’s hatred for the pest competing with him for his harvest blazed fiercer in our hearts than it had ever done before.
On the slope of the hill beyond the river, about twenty yards from the edge of the wheat, we constructed a small shelter, a dugout covered with a roof of brushwood supported by four posts. This roof was intended not only to provide the hunter with concealment but also to protect him from rain and wind. And Meyssonnier—for it was he who designed the shelter for us—had even added the refinement of a rough wooden grating at the bottom of the trench so that we needn’t stand directly on the ground. Because, he said, even through rubber boots, I don’t care how thick they are, the damp always seeps up inside you.
We divided up into pairs to keep watch on a rota system every night in our little dugout. We didn’t exclude the women, or at least not the two young ones, because during the past two months we’d been teaching them to use a gun, and they were really not at all bad shots by now. Catie, needless to say, paired off with Thomas. And Miette, though I had been expecting her to choose me, in fact chose Jacquet. Which meant that Peyssou, since Jacquet was already spoken for, was left with Colin, and myself with Meyssonnier. At which point Evelyne—as Miette presumably foresaw—made a scene in order to be included in my watch too, and when I resisted she even began a hunger strike, and in the end I was forced to agree.
A week went by. No badger. Although such smelly creatures, they must have very sensitive noses, because this one had undoubtedly caught wind of us. Though it’s true that from his point of view we were probably the ones that stank. Never mind, we continued to lie in wait for him.
So time passed, slow as a river. I was awakened one morning at dawn by the brightness of the light. Since the weather had become so fine I always left the window open. I liked to lie in bed for a moment after waking up and survey the progress of the vegetation on the hillside opposite. It was incredible. Who would have believed only two months ago that we would soon be seeing so much grass and so many leaves, the latter not so much on the trees—very few of those had survived—but on a fantastic number of little bushes that had taken advantage of their great neighbors’ destruction to proliferate amazingly over all the hills.
I looked across at Evelyne, asleep on the sofa. The result of our hospitality-by-barter system—one day for every swallow or bite—was that the one night for which she had originally been admitted to my room had now extended itself to two months. But I didn’t dare bring the agreement to an end, because it seemed to have done her so much good. She had color in her face, her cheeks had filled out, and she was putting on muscles. And though her chest had remained quite flat, despite my predictions, at least now it was more athletically flat and not just bones. She had learned to ride quicker than anyone. She was totally fearless in the saddle and riding was a joy for her, those little feet beating her mount’s flanks to urge it into a gallop, her blond braids flying out behind her. Braids were strict regulation gear for her now when riding, ever since the day when she was on Morgane and raised her right hand to push her hair out of her eyes. The result had been a series of bucks that eventually deposited her on top of a little bush, fortunately unhurt.
Just as Evelyne sensed my gaze on her face and opened her eyes, there came the sound of a gunshot. Then another, and a quarter of a second later, a third. In a flash I had passed from puzzlement to concern. It had been Peyssou and Colin’s turn in the little shelter that night, but by this time they should be almost on their way back. No badger was going to venture into the wheat by daylight. And even if he had, it couldn’t have taken Colin and Peyssou three shots to settle him. I was on my feet and already pulling on my trousers.
“Evelyne, run down to the gate tower and tell Meyssonnier to open the gate and wait for me there with his gun.”
A month before, I had decided that our guns should be considered as personal weapons and that we would all keep our own in our bedrooms. In the event of a surprise night attack this meant that there would be three guns in the gate tower, three in the keep, and one, Jacquet’s, in the house, except when it was Jacquet’s turn in Miette’s room, which was the case now.
Evelyne sped out of the room, barefoot and in her nightgown, and as I followed her, my clothes scarcely buttoned, Thomas’s door opened and he appeared, still in pajama trousers, naked to the waist.
“What’s happening?”
“Take your guns, both of you, go up on the gate-tower battlements and keep guard. Don’t move from there. You must stay and guard Malevil. Quickly, quickly! Don’t stop to dress!”
I hurtled down the spiral staircase and found myself face to face with Jacquet, who had just emerged from Miette’s room. His reactions had been quicker than Thomas’s. He was wearing pants and carrying his gun. We didn’t stop to speak. We just ran side by side.
As we reached the middle of the outer enclosure, a fourth shot rang out from down by the Rhunes. I stopped, worked a bullet up into the breech of my gun, and fired into the air. I hoped they would take it as a signal that we were on our way. I set off again. I saw Meyssonnier ahead, gun in hand, just opening the gate. I shouted as I ran, “Go on! Go on! I’ll catch up to you!”
Jacquet, who had continued running while I stopped to fire my signal, was now ahead of me. I ran through the gate arch on his heels and was just starting down the slope outside when I became aware of panting behind me. I turned and saw Evelyne, still barefoot and in her nightgown, running at full speed trying to overtake me.
Wild with anger, I stopped, seized her by the arm as she reached me, shook her, and yelled, “In the name of God! What do you think you’re doing! Get back inside! Go on!”
“No! No!” she cried, eyes starting out of her head. “I don’t want to leave you!”
I bellowed, “Get back inside!”
I passed my gun from right hand to left and slapped her twice, very hard. She obeyed like a whipped animal, backing toward the gate, but with infuriating slowness, staring at me with terrified eyes. I yelled, “Get inside!”
I was losing precious seconds! And Catie and Thomas not at the gate yet! No one to take charge of her! Certainly not La Menou, because I could see her through the open gate, clutching Momo’s shirt with both hands, trying to hold him back.
I picked Evelyne up, threw her over my shoulder, ran back through the arch and dumped her inside as though she was a package I had delivered.
At the same moment I saw Momo’s shirt give way. Freed from his mother’s grip, he stumbled forward a few steps, recovered, and began haring off down the road toward the river.
“Momo! Momo!” La Menou shouted despairingly and began running in her turn.
The other two were still not down! It just wasn’t possible! She must have stopped to make herself up! And he’s waiting while she does it!
I left Evelyne inside and began running back down the road again. I passed La Menou, her tiny thin ankles flickering beneath her skirts, and I yelled, “Momo! Momo!” But I knew I hadn’t a chance of catching him. He had always run like a young child, his feet skimming the ground, but very fast, and I’d never seen him out of breath.
At the hairpin bend leading down into the dry riverbed, where the road ran al
most parallel to itself for a short stretch, I could see La Menou running for all she was worth up above me, and behind her, catching up to her, Evelyne! I was totally, but totally, demoralized by this incredible act of disobedience. I don’t know why, but I was now convinced that Catie and Thomas were also going to desert their post and follow us. Malevil was going to be wholly without defenders. All our belongings, all our stores, all our animals abandoned to the first comer! I was in despair, and as I ran on, my heart thumping against my ribs, teeth clenched, my throat was so knotted it was hurting me. I was beside myself with fury and apprehension.
As I emerged into the little valley, quite a way ahead, standing motionless with their backs to me, guns in their hands, I saw Peyssou, Colin, Meyssonnier, and Jacquet, side by side in a line. They were absolutely still. They weren’t speaking. They looked as though they’d been turned to stone. What had petrified them like that I had no idea, because I could see nothing but their backs. But certainly their attitude was not that of people being threatened, or needing to defend themselves, or in any way afraid. They were dumb, turned to statues, and even the sound of my running behind them didn’t make them turn around.
I reached them at last. Not one of them emerged even for a moment from his stupor, or moved aside to acknowledge my arrival. And then I saw in my turn.
About ten yards or so in front of us, lower down the slope, were twenty or so people in rags, reduced to the ultimate degree of physical deterioration, not just pale but really yellow, the skin hanging on their cheekbones, some of them so weak they couldn’t even control their eye muscles, so they were squinting horribly. They were all kneeling or lying on our wheat and devouring the half-ripe kernels with little frightened yapping noises. They weren’t even attempting to separate the grains from their coverings, they just ate it all. I noticed that there were green stains around their mouths, which indicated that before coming across our wheat they had been trying to eat grass. They looked like emaciated animals. Their squinting eyes gleamed with fear and greed. And they kept shooting us sideways glances as they hurried to cram the spikes of wheat into their mouths. When they gagged, they spat what was in their mouths out into their hands then pushed it back in again immediately. There were some women among them. Though the only way of telling was by the length of their hair, since their terrifying thinness had deprived them of all superficial sexual characteristics. None of them had a firearm. But lying on the crushed wheat beside them I saw a number of pitchforks and clubs.
The sight was so pitiable that it took me a moment to realize that they had already ruined a quarter of our harvest, and were going to spoil the whole lot if we didn’t intervene. It wasn’t just what they ate. They were ruining a great deal more than they actually consumed by walking and lying on it. And that grain they were trampling or devouring was our life. If others could destroy Malevil’s wheat with total impunity, then Malevil too would be reduced to the state of a wandering band of starving animals, like so many others. Because this one in front of us was only the first, I was sure of that. It was the sprouting vegetation that had brought them out into the country in search of food.
Peyssou was next to me. He didn’t look as though he was even aware of my presence. But the sweat was streaming down his face.
“We’ve tried everything,” Colin said in a voice choking with grief and anger. “We’ve talked to them, we’ve shouted at them. We fired over their heads. We threw stones at them. Stones! They don’t give a damn about stones. They put up one arm to shield their heads and just go on eating!”
“Who are these people, just who are they?” Meyssonnier said with a bewildered look that I would have found comic at any other time. “Where have they come from?”
Then he began shouting at them in patois, shaken by impotent rage, “Get away from there. Get away, in the name of God! Can’t you see you’re spoiling our wheat! What do you think we’re going to eat?”
“Wasted breath,” Colin said. “Patois or French, they don’t even answer! They just go on cramming it in. And to think we got so wild about one badger!”
“What about using our gun butts, driving them off?” Peyssou said at last in a strangled voice.
I shook my head. No good trusting to their weakness. Any creature at bay is capable of anything. And the fight wouldn’t be equal, gun butts against forks. No, I was perfectly aware of the only logical decision to take. My companions too. And I was incapable of taking it. Standing there on the edge of that wheatfield, gun in hand, safety catch off, a bullet already there in the breech, finger on the trigger, it would be an understatement to say I hesitated. I was struck by a total inhibition of the will that reduced me to paralysis, despite a crystal clarity of mind and judgment. I too had been turned to stone.
The only one moving was Momo. He had always been very excitable, but I had never seen him a prey to such insane agitation as he was displaying now. He was dancing, stamping, waving his arms over his head, shaking his fists, yelling his head off. He was totally possessed by mindless rage, constantly turning his glittering eyes in my direction, shaking his shaggy mane, adjuring me with gestures and unintelligible cries to put an end to the pillage. And he kept crying in a high, piercing voice, “Huh heat! Huh heat!”
The pillagers must have been fighting among themselves, or with some other band, because their clothes were in tatters, and the dirty stained shreds of cloth, the color of earth, revealed their thighs, their torsos, their backs. I saw one unfortunate creature, a female, whose limp wrinkled breasts were sagging down to touch the ground as she dragged herself on all fours farther into the patch. She was wearing shoes, whereas most of them had only rags wrapped around their feet. There were no children among them, no one either very young or old. The weakest had already succumbed. The ones before us were all “in the prime of life.” That expression seemed appallingly cruel when applied to such skeletons. My eyes were drawn by their protruding pelvises, by the enormous knee joints, by the shoulder blades and collarbones that seemed almost to be stuck on as additions. When they chewed you could see the muscles of their jaws quite clearly. Their skin was just a thin, more or less wrinkled bag laid over the bones, and the group as a whole was giving off a sickening rancid odor that caught in your throat and made you want to gag.
“Huh heat! Huh heat!” Momo cried, and he seized his hair with both hands as though about to tear it all out.
My right hand was tensed around my gun, but it was still hanging down by my side, barrel pointing to the earth. I couldn’t even manage to get it up to my shoulder. I was filled with an insane hatred of these foreigners, these plunderers, because they were devouring our lives. And also because they were what we could so quickly become, all of us at Malevil, if this pillage of our resources continued. But at the same time I was filled with abject pity too, exactly canceling out my hate and reducing me to this impotence.
“Huh heat! Huh heat!” Momo shrieked, his agitation reaching a paroxysm of fury.
And suddenly he rushed across the ten yards separating us from the band, hurled himself on the nearest looter with a wild shriek, and began hammering at him with his fists and boots.
“Momo! Momo!” La Menou shouted.
Someone laughed, perhaps Peyssou. I too had an impulse to laugh. From affection for Momo, because an act like that, so childish and so futile, was so very typical of him. And also because nothing that Momo did was really of any consequence. Because Momo was excused from the serious side of life, like a smaller child allowed to join in a game but too little to understand the rules. I never imagined that anything could ever happen to Momo. He had always been so protected—by La Menou, by my uncle, by me, by all of us at Malevil.
A half second too late I saw the savage look on the man’s face. A quarter second too late I saw the fork. I thought my shot would prevent the blow. It was already on its way. The three prongs were already driving into Momo’s heart as my bullet ripped out his assailant’s throat.
They fell at the same time. I heard
an animal howl and saw La Menou rush forward and hurl herself on her son’s body. Then I was slowly moving forward like an automaton and firing as I moved. On my right and on my left, advancing in a line, my companions were firing too. We just fired into the mass, without taking aim. My mind was a total blank. I thought, Momo is dead. I felt nothing. I advanced and I fired. There was no necessity to advance—we were already so close—and yet advance we did, mechanically, methodically, as though we were scything a field.
All movement had ceased, and yet we kept firing still, until every cartridge and shell was gone.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Except for La Menou, none of us felt Momo’s loss immediately, partly because a kind of incredulity prevented us from accepting it, but above all because the incursion of the looters we had killed resulted in a total immersion during the next two weeks, from morning till night, in a series of backbreaking and wholly engrossing tasks.
First there were the dead bodies to be disposed of. It was a horrible task, complicated still further by the fact that I insisted no one go too near them. I was afraid they might be infested with parasites carrying the germs of diseases against which we would have no immunity. I remembered, for instance, that fleas could be carriers of plague, and lice of typhus. Moreover, the terrible physical state the poor wretches had been in, and the fact that to judge from the rags on their feet they had come from some distance away, combined to make me even more wary of contact with them still.
Near the heaps of bodies we dug a great trench, then in the trench we laid layers of brushwood, and on the brushwood layers of sticks, until the last layer of wood was level with the surrounding soil. Then, using a running noose attached to the end of a pole, we secured one foot of each corpse in turn with a rope, dragged it over to the trench, taking good care to keep well clear of it, and maneuvered it onto the pyre. There were eighteen corpses in all, five of them women.