Jeannot and the mayor had stayed at the farm, and stood ready to dispatch little couriers, namely those young people in the canton who ran faster than rabbits, to keep the other officers abreast of anything deserving of their attention. Marcelot, Riri, Ripol and Léon Saurat had gone to the church, where they shared an understanding with a certain priest who had become one of them, and with whom on that day words were as useless as a cotton parasol. André, finally, had set off on the path to the clearing, with Maria, Chachard, and the Saurat sons at his side. This was what the pulse of destiny had led to: these men and this little girl hurrying toward a clearing more frozen than the ice floes, observing how everything had succumbed to the desperate silence of an entire transformed forest. But on they went, and soon they reached their goal.
A strange goal, or so André put it. While only a short distance away the forest pathways were numbed with icy silence, a sudden rustling of sounds and vapors greeted them the moment they crossed the line of the last trees. Stunned, they stopped and gazed out at the sight. The cold that had been gnawing at their bones seemed a touch less biting under an open sky, and they wondered if this was the effect of the mists floating in an abnormally shaped space. André had stopped the three men behind him in their tracks; he looked at Maria then again gave the order to move ahead. They carried on to the center of the circle where the mists were coiling upon themselves in a slow, thick, but still transparent dance. It was astonishing: the banners of fog were as opaque as walls and yet as clear as water. You could see through invisible whirlwinds, and yet in spite of that they were more impenetrable than stone!
Finally, the whispered murmurings in the central opening seemed to them to be the fairest thing in this life. A confused sensation came over them—that voices were slipping into the hollow of these light pulsations, but they could not actually distinguish them from the vibrations that were causing the rustling in the clearing. Chachard, who had climbed up the hill at a good pace, like some dandified woodsman, never taking his hands from his pockets, now came close to tearing the linings of those pockets when he suddenly drew out his fists—such a scene, he could hardly leave them in his trousers—and, unusual for them, the two Saurat sons’ jaws dropped as if granting to gravity all the honor of their stupefaction. But as for André—he was looking at Maria: his gaze did not turn away, or coerce.
She was standing motionless in the middle of the clearing, and the mists had begun to choreograph a strange, complex dance around her. At last she could see what had once been only a foreboding, what she had been expecting all these long months since the letter from Italy and the dream with the white horse.
She saw.
She saw the furor to come, and the arrows of death.
She saw departure, if she survived the attack.
She could distinctly perceive voices that others could only guess at.
the rebirth of the mists
the rootless the last alliance
Something tore inside her and split the firmament of her inner vision with streaks of ink that slowly diluted then disappeared in a last pearly wash of light.
She could feel the waves of her power roiling and rushing forward.
She could hear the voice of the little pianist from the night of healing.
Maria
Maria
Maria
The men were waiting. They were still cold, but not as cold as they had been in the valley, and they looked at the mists swirling around the wee girl petrified by a cold that did not come from without.
Maria
Maria
Maria
There was an explosion of such violence that they all flung themselves to the ground. The enemy was acting at last. The dark wall bore down upon them with a roar, striking with all its might at the last houses in the village and at the church. As it struck, it shattered, and the extent of its deformity became visible. Worse yet, the advancing tide revealed the mortal ambush that was yet to come, and seething tornadoes, charged with deadly rains, opened the way for the black arrows, as they shrieked and fired their lethal blades and ice.
The roofs collapsed.
The first seconds were the most terrible. It was as if all the plagues of the Anti-Christ had converged at the same time upon the villagers, stripped as they were of any shelter or protection. The rain fell hard and heavy, with drops that wounded like fragments of stone, leaving gashes that did not bleed but seemed to stab the skin with needles of pain, and into those gashes slipped an icy, abnormal chill. The wind swept away the roofs, not in the usual way, which was to carry them off, but by causing them to implode, and Gégène and his men blessed Maria for protecting them from this fury. Finally, the most terrifying assault came from the black arrows: they sped like lightning over the first segment of their trajectory, slowed down half way and now, suspended in the tempest, seemed to be endlessly readjusting their sights, preparing to take aim. Then they rushed forward and the nightmare began: they did not touch their victims, but exploded a few inches away, flinging them to the ground with the force of a shock wave that shattered bones. Several villagers fell. But almost all of them had already been lying down when the attack began, and, with the frail ramparts of their bodies, the stronger tried to protect the weaker, while wind and arrows made the waves in the air as dangerous as land mines. Worse yet, the water level was rising, and they watched as, impossibly, the waters climbed the slope for no other reason than the fact that an evil power had willed it . . . alas . . . an entire region flooded by the assault of the missiles of hatred, turning the elements of life into weapons of torture and death. The villagers lay flat on their stomachs on the surface of the universe, and they felt like rats on a sinking ship.
Everyone had flung themselves to the ground, except for two men who, despite the fury, refused to submit, and it was something to see, the priest and the yokel standing proud in the tempest, while the whirlwinds and arrows seemed to spare them, miraculously, even as the charge overwhelmed the entire valley. Minds prone to hasty conclusions will say that this was either courage or folly, but it was simply the fact that when the arrows exploded in the storm, the good father and the peasant were enlightened by an understanding that showed them what weapons they must take up in this war. In truth, Gégène and Father François sensed this was as much a battle of mind as of matter, and they knew they must fight with their hearts as well as their rifles—indeed, the arrows seemed to be ignoring the two valiant souls, who did not bow their heads even when everything around them was collapsing. Moreover, when they saw this, Riri, Ripol, and Léon Saurat, who had never felt so heavy from his old rheumatism, nor so intoxicated from the sudden burst of energy that set his sixty-nine-year-old self on his feet, now stood up as well and began organizing the defense, remarking that the arrows were locked onto targets on land.
Just as there are certain days when soldiers must be made to sit, there are some battles which require one to stand and face the salvos: without a word, the five men rallied like sheep dogs around their herd, and in no time they had driven those who could still walk to the center of the square, where they made them line up, back to back, in a tight circle: the arrows seemed to abandon the head-on attack, although they continued to explode all around the church. There was a moment’s respite. But they knew it would not last for long, because the waters were approaching, and Gégène lifted his head in the direction of his farm, then the woods, looking more worried with each passing minute as he wondered what Maria was doing, and whether his Lorette would survive.
The nave of the church collapsed with a crash, as if struck by a cannonball, and fragments of stone flew in every direction. At the Hollows Farm, where Maria’s mother had stayed behind, the frost united with gusts of wind fit to sink a ship at sea, and although the roof was still intact, the walls of the stable had begun to give way, and the farmyard was submerged by gravel tossed here and there on the rain. In the woods the animals had
gone to ground, but the cold was even more biting beneath the foliage than in the open plain. All through the land the ravages of nature reduced to nothing the mildness of days it had once woven, hurling to the ground everything that used to stand proud under the sky, and it made you wonder how long anything could resist a tempest which, in mere minutes, had destroyed so much of what human genius had taken centuries to build.
And yet still they hoped, because they had a magical little child on their side, a leader who knew greatness, and a land that had never betrayed those who served it, and once the initial panic that reduced everyone to an animal state had receded, they even felt a growing sense of indignation, because—no matter how poor—they were not used to being treated like this, and into their rebellious selves they welcomed a reserve of courage, inspired by the long winter hunts and by their poaching and toasts to friendship, and that courage fortified their hearts in the storm. In fact, it seemed as if they owed this bravery to the land, for the land could not harm those who knew how to honor it—and all the cataclysms had come from the vast sky, after all; their surge of courage provided a moment’s respite in the course of the disaster, and the wind and rain could go no further, because they had been thwarted by the strength of the land.
Yes, the strength of the land. In the clearing where the other battle was taking place, the battle in Maria’s heart, André could feel that strength with all the vigor of a life spent standing tall on the marl of his fields, could feel it with all the age-old peasant knowledge that flowed in his veins. He did not know how, but he knew there was a charm, and all that concerned him now was this anchoring, with its knots and lines on the geological map of the lowlands, offering to his loved ones new reserves of determination born of the bare roots of the earth. He also knew that swords were being crossed up there, and the fleet’s weapons could not be overcome by the mere weapons of the earth.
He looked at Maria and said, “The sky is yours.”
TERESA
The Clemente sisters
Clara and the Maestro watched Maria as she set off with her father to the clearing in the mists, while the other three brought up the rear as if they were escorting Our Savior Jesus Christ himself. The two young lads were as handsome as autumn pheasants, and you could sense in them the vigor of personalities never prone to torment of any kind. The oldest one, his hands in his pockets in a manner that bespoke the jubilation of being free, wore a face furrowed as much by a constant urge to laugh as by maturity. But all of them expressed the same determination, born of their awareness that they were caught up in something much greater than their simple noggins. When they left the cover of the trees to enter the clearing, Clara was struck by the calligraphy traced by the mists. Like Alessandro drawing characters in ink without knowing the language, the mists told a tale, and she was unable to interpret its idiom. But she was concerned above all about Maria, and worried about the new set of her features since the night Eugénie cured Marcel. She could read sorrow there, and fear, as clearly as if they were carved in stone, and she supposed it was the same on the faces of officers who had undergone the loss of their men.
Petrus had not stopped snoring noisily since early morning, and now he yawned repeatedly, and extracted himself from his armchair with some difficulty. He exchanged a look with the Maestro, and something seemed to set him back on his feet.
“I need a drink,” he muttered.
But when he saw the battle through Clara’s vision, he let out a whistle under his breath.
“It’s not going well,” he said.
“She’s thinking about Eugénie,” said Clara. “She’s afraid of losing more people she loves.”
“A sad experience of command,” said the Maestro.
“She is not commanding,” said Clara, “and these are her parents.”
“Rose and André are not Maria’s parents,” said Petrus.
In the east clearing, Maria had swung around to face the sky of snow, and the men had followed her example, looking up at clouds more opalescent than milk.
“There are many orphans in this war,” said Clara after a pause.
“There are many orphans in the world, and many different ways of being an orphan,” said the Maestro.
There was another pause. In the look Petrus leveled at the Maestro, Clara could detect a hint of reproach. Then he poured himself a glass of moscato and said, “We owe you that story as well. The story of the Clemente sisters.”
In his mind he saw two young women sitting side by side in a summer garden. One of them she already knew, her name was Marta, and she had been Alessandro’s great love, but as she looked at the other young woman her curiosity was tinged with a sweet sensation, luminous with the sort of hazy clarity you can find in the air on a hot day. She was dark-haired, fierce; she wore two drop earrings made of crystal; her face was a pure oval tickled with dimples; her skin was golden; and her laugh was like a fire in the night. But on her face you could also read the concentration of a soul whose life is entirely inward, and a mischievous gravity which acquires a silver patina with age.
“Marta and Teresa Clemente,” said Petrus. “You cannot imagine two sisters more dissimilar, and yet more united. Ten years between them, but above all a rift of pain. The Clemente family gave receptions, and Marta’s sorry little face would wander through them like a ghost; everyone thought she was so lovely, yet so melancholic, and they loved her sad poems—you could have sworn they were written by the hand of an adult, from the heart of an adult. At the age of twenty she married a man with as little talent for love as for poetry, and she used the pretext of her married life to curtail her presence at the soirées. Another little girl was there now, whom they also found very lovely, and very joyous, and she was a young prodigy of the type one rarely encounters. At the age of ten she had a skill and a maturity that was the envy of pianists twice her age—and on top of it she was as mischievous as a magpie and as stubborn as a fox when she did not want to play the pieces they gave her.
“Alessandro had become her friend long before he met Marta, and he often said that she offended the rule according to which artists find consolation for their pain, because it is that very pain that allows their art to take flight. But he was also aware of the dizzying well inside her, and he knew that her laughter had never, not even for a single day, betrayed her mission, which was to delve deep into her art. Sometimes she would look at the clouds and the Maestro could see the shadow of the mists passing over her face. Then she played, and her soul seemed to rise even higher. Marta listened to her and grew vibrant with the love of her younger sister. Then she left again in the evening, after a kiss as she waltzed Teresa around the room. But once the older sister had vanished around the corner of the lane, the little girl sat down on the steps outside the house and waited for her pain to subside, the pain of seeing a loved one suffer so much. She expressed all this in her playing, her talent for extraordinary happiness, and the pain of loving a sister who had chosen to lock herself away in sorrow. I do not know the migrations of the heart between those who share their blood, but I believe that Teresa and Marta belonged to a guild of pilgrims united as a noble sisterhood in an identical quest. Their parents fluttered around them, busy with their grand dinners, which boiled down to nothing more than their fantasies of the privileged class, and they were as unable to understand their daughters as they were to see the human wood for the trees of their drawing rooms.
“So the Clemente sisters grew up among their servants and two ghosts who wore tail coats and organdy gowns; they lived on an island, and in the distance you could see the ships sailing to their destinations, never stopping to call at the pier where people lived, loved, and went fishing. Perhaps Marta, because she was born ten years before her sister, had absorbed all the indifference of her mother and father; consequently the strength that came from their lineage, from an ancestor, perhaps, or from more ancient times when money had not yet corrupted a taste for the gentl
e life, had been embodied in Teresa’s tender flesh where, shielded by the older sister’s melancholy, that strength had been able to blossom. But in return, this created an alliance in which Teresa’s vital principle took its source in the sacrifice that Marta had agreed to make of her own life force, and it was no surprise that the death of one sister was closely followed by the death of the other—whatever the circumstances that made it so difficult to determine the causes and the machinations. Indeed, I would not be surprised if, in the end, we find out that we are all the characters of some meticulous but mad novelist.”
Petrus fell silent.
“You play the way your mother did,” said the Maestro, “and it is your playing that invokes her ghost—a ghost to whom I have not yet been able to tell the story properly. Do you know the reason for which a man cannot find the words inside himself that would free both the living and the dead?”
“Sorrow,” she said.
“Sorrow.”
For the first time since she had known him, she could see the imprint of pain upon his face.
“It was already an era of unrest and suspicion, and your father often came to the villa during the night,” he continued. “One evening Teresa was there, playing a sonata.”
The Maestro fell silent and Clara immersed herself in his remembering. They had left the windows open onto the balmy summer air, and it was the same sonata, the one where she’d found the poem in the margin of the score, the one that united hearts and pierced the space of visions. When she had played it two years earlier, on the evening that had taken her in her dreams to Maria, there had been a perfume of currents and damp earth in the air, but she had not been able to decipher the story told by the score, and the poem had curled up into a bubble of silence. She listened to the young woman playing, and the same bubble formed in her chest. Then a man appeared in the room. He had come out of nowhere and he was focused intensely on a place inside himself revealed to him by the music. She could see every detail of his features, transfixed as he was by the music, and on his face, luminous with youth, was the serenity of a thousand years, reflections of moonlight and thoughts of a river.