‘Do you take people for geese when you tell them that plums fall straight into your lap off the tree? Long before you can get your thing going, the land will have packed up and everything will be buggered up.’
In the face of such a vigorous attack Canon, who had never yet met his match, was visibly shaken. He tried to launch out into all the tales he had picked up from his fine Paris friends, such as state-owned farms and scientific agriculture. The other man cut him short:
‘I know all that claptrap. By the time you get round to your scientific agriculture, the plains of France will have already been submerged under a flood of American wheat. Look, this little book that I was just reading gives all the details about it. Christ, the French peasant can pack up. The show's over!’
And as though giving a lesson in his classroom, he talked about the wheat across the ocean. Immense plains the size of a kingdom in which Beauce would have looked like a little lost lump of dry earth, land so fertile that instead of fertilizing it you had to reduce its fertility by a previous harvest, which didn't prevent it producing two crops a year; farms of eighty thousand acres divided into sections and each section divided into smaller sections; the large ones each having their own overseer, the smaller ones under a foreman with whole camps of hutments for man and beast, the kitchens and the equipment; battalions of agricultural workers taken on in the spring, organized like a campaigning army, living in the open with free board and lodging and laundry and medical care and dismissed in the autumn; furrows several miles long to be ploughed and sown; oceans of wheat to be cut stretching so far that you couldn't see where it ended; the worker needing merely to see to the working of the machines, double ploughs equipped with cutting discs, sowers and weeders, combine-harvesters, self-propelled threshing machines with straw elevators and automatic sacking; peasants were mechanics, a whole platoon of workers following each machine on horseback, ready to dismount to tighten a screw, change a bolt or make a spare part; in a word, the land had been turned into a bank, operated by financiers, exploited and cropped to the limit and giving ten times as much under such impersonal, scientific, material care than it would deliver, even reluctantly, in response to the loving handiwork of a man.
‘And you hope to compete with your tuppenny ha'penny equipment,’ he went on, ‘when you don't know anything and don't want to, just stuck in your rut. Yes, you're knee-deep in wheat from America! And there'll be still more of it yet, it'll be waist-high, shoulder-high and up to your mouth and then cover your head! A river, a torrent, a flood which'll swallow up the whole lot of you!’
The peasants were listening round-eyed, panic-stricken at the thought of this flood of foreign wheat. They could already imagine it with horror; were they going to be carried away and drowned, like that devil promised? It was almost as if it were happening already. Rognes, their fields, the whole of Beauce would be submerged.
‘No, it'll never happen,’ choked Delhomme. ‘The government will protect us.’
‘A fine thing, the government,’ replied Lequeu with a sneer. ‘It needs protection itself. What's really funny is that you elected Monsieur Rochefontaine. At least the proprietor of La Borderie was logical to want Monsieur de Chédeville. Neither of them are of any earthly use, anyway. No parliament would ever vote an import duty of that size, so protectionism won't help you. You're buggered, you might as well shut up shop.’
At that there was uproar, with everybody talking at once. Couldn't they stop this miserable wheat coming in? They would sink the boats in the harbours, they'd shoot anyone bringing it ashore. Their voices were trembling and they would have wept and begged on bended knee for someone to save them from this abundance of cheap bread which was threatening the country. And with a derisive laugh the schoolmaster replied that nothing like that had ever been seen before: in the old days the only fear was famine; people had always been afraid of being short of wheat, so they must be really sunk to have reached the stage of being afraid of having too much. He was becoming drunk with his own words as he shouted down their wild protestations.
‘You're a breed that has reached the end of its tether, you've been eaten up by your idiotic love of the land, that miserable bit of land which has got you by the short hair, which prevents you from seeing any further than your noses, which you'd commit murder for! You've been wedded to the land for centuries and she's made you into cuckolds. Look at America, the farmer is master of all his land there. There's nothing to attach him to it, no family link, no memories. As soon as his field is exhausted, he moves on. If he hears that five hundred miles away they've discovered more fertile plains, he ups and settles there. He's free and he's making a lot of money, whereas you're just poverty-stricken prisoners.’
Buteau had gone pale. Lequeu had looked at him when he mentioned murdering. He tried to put a bold face on it.
‘People are what they are. What's the point of getting annoyed, since you say yourself that it wouldn't change anything?’
Delhomme nodded and they all began to celebrate again, Lengaigne, Clou, Fouan, even Delphin and the conscripts, who had been watching the scene with amusement, hoping that it would end in blows. Nettled at seeing this ink-shitter, as they called him, shouting louder than they, Canon and Jesus Christ pretended to roar with laughter too. They had reached the point of siding with the peasants.
‘It's stupid to get annoyed,’ asserted Canon with a shrug. ‘We need organization.’
Lequeu made a savage gesture:
‘Well, let me tell you what I think. I'm in favour of demolishing everything.’
He was livid with rage and he flung the words in their faces as though hoping they would flatten them:
‘What bloody cowards peasants are, yes, all peasants. When you think that you're in the majority and that you let the townsfolk and the workers bugger you about. Christ, there's only one thing I regret and that's that my mother and father were peasants. Perhaps that's why I dislike you even more. Because there's no doubt about it, you could be the masters. But the fact is that you don't really get on well together, you're isolated and suspicious and ignorant: you save all your dirty tricks for each other. Well, what have you got hidden in all that stinking stagnant water? Are you like those duck-ponds covered with weed that look deep and which you couldn't drown a cat in? Fancy being the secret force that could shape the future and then just sticking in the mud! And believing in priests. So if there's no God, what's holding you back? When you were held back by fear of hellfire, then it's understandable that you grovelled. But now just go ahead: loot everything, burn everything! And meanwhile go on strike, that would be easier still and funnier too, you've all got a bit of money, you could hang on as long as you needed. Produce just enough for your own needs, don't market anything, not one sack of potatoes, not one bushel of wheat. How all those Parisians would starve! What a spring-clean that would be, by Christ!’
From the remote depths of the darkness, a gust of cold air seemed to be blowing through the window. Long trails of smoke were rising from the flaring paraffin lamps. Nobody felt like interrupting their rabid schoolmaster, despite all the uncomplimentary remarks he was addressing to them.
He concluded at the top of his voice, banging his book on the table till the glasses tinkled:
‘I'm telling you all this but I'm not worried. Cowards though you are, it's you who'll finally overturn everything when the time comes. It's often happened and it'll be the same again. Just wait until your hunger and poverty make you fling yourselves on the towns like ravening wolves. And this wheat that's being brought in may spark it off. When there's too much of it, there won't be enough, we'll have shortages again. It's always wheat that causes revolts and killings. Oh, yes, the towns will be burnt down, razed to the ground, the land will become a desert overgrown with brambles and there'll be blood, streams of blood, so that the land will once again be able to provide bread for those who'll come after us!’
He tugged the door open and disappeared. In the general stupefaction, a cry was he
ard; the dirty scoundrel, they ought to have his blood! Such a quiet man up till now! He must be going mad. Delhomme, normally so calm, said that he would write to the préfet and the others urged him to do so. But Jesus Christ and his friend Canon seemed particularly enraged, the first because of his ideas about 1789 and his humanitarian motto of liberty, equality and fraternity, the second with his authoritarian social and scientific organization. They were pale and exasperated at not having found any reply to him and more indignant than the peasants themselves, shouting that people like that ought to be guillotined. Hearing mention of blood, the rivers of blood which Lequeu had been calling down on the world in his frenzy, Buteau, with all sorts of strange ideas churning around unconsciously inside his head, had stood up with a nervous shudder, as though he were in agreement; and then he slid along the wall, furtively glancing to see if he was being followed, and disappeared in his turn.
The conscripts immediately started celebrating again. They were vociferously demanding sausages from Flore when Nénesse shut them up by pointing to Delphin, who had just collapsed with his head on the table. The poor devil was as white as a sheet. His handkerchief had slipped off his injured hand and was becoming stained with blood. So they yelled at Bécu, who was still asleep; he woke up at last and looked at his son's mutilated hand. He must have understood because he picked up a bottle, screaming that he would brain him. In the end, when he had taken the boy away, stumbling, they heard him bursting into tears in the middle of his oaths.
That evening, having heard of Françoise's accident at dinner, Hourdequin came into Rognes to ask Jean about it, as a friendly gesture. He was smoking his pipe and preoccupied with all his troubles as he walked along in the deep silence of the dark night. Feeling somewhat calmer, before calling on his former farm-hand he decided to prolong his walk by going down the hill. But when he was at the bottom, the sound of Lequeu's voice, which seemed to be carrying through the open window of the tavern into the shadows of the night, brought him to a sudden halt in the darkness. Then, deciding to walk up the hill again, the voice pursued him, and even when he had reached Jean's house he could still hear it as clearly as ever, as if it were sharpened by distance, like the cutting blade of a knife.
Jean was standing outside beside his door, leaning against the wall. He was so distressed that he could no longer remain at Françoise's bedside, for he was stifling.
‘I'm sorry, Jean,’ said Hourdequin, ‘what's the news?’
The poor man made a heartbroken gesture.
‘Oh, Monsieur Hourdequin, she's dying!’
Neither of them said anything more. Deep silence fell again while Lequeu still went ranting on in his grating voice.
After a few minutes, the farmer, who was listening in spite of himself, could not resist saying angrily:
‘Can you hear that man bawling away? Isn't what he's saying funny when you're feeling sad?’
Once more he was plunged in his sorrows at the sound of that frightening voice and at the thought of the woman dying in the next room. He loved his land so dearly, sentimentally and almost intellectually: and now the last harvests had dealt him the final blow. He had squandered all his fortune and soon La Borderie would not even be able to feed him. Nothing had been of any use, his enthusiasm, his new methods of farming, his fertilizers, his machines. He blamed his disaster on lack of capital; but even then he wasn't certain, because everyone was in the same boat, the Robiquets had just been turned out of La Chamade for not paying the rent and the Coquarts were going to have to sell their farm at Saint Juste. And there was no possible escape. Never had he felt more fettered by his land than now, for every day the money and effort he had poured into it had shortened the chain. Catastrophe was looming round the corner, to put an end to the age-old struggle between the smallholder and the big landlord by destroying them both. It was the beginning of the times he had predicted, with wheat at less than sixteen francs and thus sold at a loss; the land was bankrupt as a result of social factors which were obviously stronger than the will of man.
And suddenly, heartbroken at his failure, Hourdequin found himself siding with Lequeu:
‘Christ, he's right! Let everything go to pot and we'll all pack up and brambles will take over the land, since the earth's exhausted and people of our sort are finished.’
And thinking of Jacqueline, he added:
‘Fortunately, I've got another trouble that'll settle my hash before that happens!’
But at that moment they heard La Grande and Frimat's wife walking about and whispering indoors. Jean shivered and ran in. It was too late. Françoise was dead, and had perhaps been dead for some time. She had not opened her eyes or her lips again. La Grande had simply noticed that she was no longer alive when she had touched her. Very white, she seemed to be sleeping, her face sunken and obstinately set. Standing at the end of the bed, Jean looked at her, bewildered, his head swimming, thinking of his sorrow, his surprise that she had not wanted to make her will, the feeling that something in his life had been broken and was coming to an end.
At this moment, as Hourdequin, once again despondent, took his leave in silence, he saw a shadowy figure slip away from the window and scurry off into the darkness. He thought it might be a prowling dog. It was Buteau, who had come up to keep watch and was hurrying away to announce to Lise that her sister was dead.
Chapter 5
NEXT morning, just as they had finished putting the corpse into the coffin, which was resting on two chairs in the middle of the room, Jean was surprised and outraged to see Lise come in, followed by Buteau. His first reaction was to turn them out; what a heartless couple, who had not even bothered to pay their last respects to their dying sister and who were finally making their appearance now the lid had been nailed down and there was no danger of meeting her face to face. Only the presence of other members of the family, Fanny and La Grande, held him back. Quarrelling in the presence of the dead was unlucky; and anyway, no one could stop Lise from making amends for her unkindness by deciding to sit with her sister's body.
So the Buteaus, who had been relying on this respect due to the dead, settled in. Without saying that they were taking over the house again they just did so in the most natural way in the world, as though it were the obvious thing now that Françoise was no longer there. True, she still was there, but all packed up to set off on her longest journey and no more of an encumbrance than a piece of furniture. After sitting down for a minute, Lise absent-mindedly started opening cupboards to make sure that no articles had been removed during her absence. Buteau had already started prowling round the cowshed and stables, like the owner who knows his way about. By evening they seemed to be completely at home again, hampered only by the coffin blocking the middle of the room. In any case, they needed to be patient for only one night: that floor space would be free early next morning.
Jean walked about uncertainly amidst all the family like a man in a daze, not knowing which way to turn. At first the house and furniture and Françoise's body had all seemed to belong to him, but as time went by they seemed to be slipping away into other people's hands. By nightfall, no one was troubling to speak to him any longer; he was merely an intruder whose presence was tolerated. Never had he felt such a disagreeable sensation of being an outsider, of not having a single friend amongst all these people who formed a united front, at least where he was concerned. Even his poor wife was ceasing to be his, so much so that when he expressed a wish to sit by her body, Fanny tried to send him away on the grounds that there were too many people there already. But he had stuck to his guns and had even taken the hundred and twenty-seven francs which were in the chest of drawers in order to ensure that they did not disappear. As Lise had opened the drawer soon after her arrival, she must have seen them, as well as the sheet of official paper, because she had quickly whispered something to La Grande. It was after this that she had settled down again with such assurance, knowing that no will had been made. No, she mustn't get the money; apprehensive as he was of what
the morrow might bring, Jean said to himself that at least he'd make sure of that. Then he spent the night on a chair.
Next morning the funeral took place early, at nine o'clock, and Father Madeline, who was leaving that evening, was just able to take the service and go to the graveside; but once there, he collapsed and had to be carried off. The Charles had come, as well as Delhomme and Nénesse. It was a decent funeral, with no trimmings. Jean was crying. Buteau was wiping his eyes. At the last minute, Lise had protested that she felt weak in the knees and would never be strong enough to accompany her poor sister's body on its last journey. So she remained behind on her own, while La Grande, Fanny and Bécu followed the bier. And on their way home, all of them deliberately stayed on in the square in front of the church to witness the final scene which everybody had been anticipating for the last twenty-four hours.
Up till now the two men, Jean and Buteau, had avoided each other's gaze, afraid of a fight developing over Françoise's dead body before it was barely cold. Now they both made their way determinedly back towards the house, watching each other out of the corners of their eyes. Now we'll see! At first glance Jean realized why Lise had not joined the funeral procession. She had wanted to stay behind in order to move in at least all their most bulky articles. She had done it within the hour by throwing her bundles over Frimat's wall and carting the breakables round on a wheelbarrow. And finally, with a clout round the ear she had sent Laure and Jules packing into the yard where they were already scuffling, while old Fouan, whom she had also hustled in, was sitting recovering his breath on the bench. The house had been recaptured.
‘Where are you going?’ Buteau asked Jean abruptly, stopping him in the doorway.
‘I'm going into my house.’
‘Your house? Where's that? Anyway it's not here. This is our house.’
Lise rushed to join Buteau and with her hands on her hips started screaming insults at him, more foul-mouthed even than her husband.