The Earth Read online

  So, when his sufferings became unbearable, Jacques Bonhomme would rise in revolt. He had centuries of fear and submission behind him, his shoulders had become hardened to blows, his soul so crushed that he did not recognize his own degradation. You could beat him and starve him and rob him of everything, year in, year out, before he would abandon his caution and stupidity, his mind filled with all sorts of muddled ideas which he could not properly understand; and this went on until a culmination of injustice and suffering flung him at his master's throat like some infuriated domestic animal who had been subjected to too many thrashings. Constantly, from one century to the next, there came the same explosion of exasperation, the ploughmen of the Jacquerie arming themselves with scythe and pitchfork when nothing remained for them but death. Such were the Christian Bagaudes of Gaul, the Pastoureaux of the time of the Crusades, then later on, the Croquants and the Nu-Pieds hurling themselves against the nobles and the soldiers of the king. After four hundred years, the cry of pain and anger from all the Jacques Bonhommes which still resounds over the devastated fields made the masters quake in their castles. Suppose they were to lose patience once again and claim at last their rightful heritage? And the vision of old surged through the land, of tall, ragged, half-naked fellows, lusting and mad with violence, spreading ruin and destruction in the same way as they have themselves been ruined and destroyed, raping in their turn the wives of those who had raped theirs!

  ‘Rein in your anger, you men and women of the countryside,’ Jean read on, in his quiet, careful voice. ‘The hour of victory will soon strike on the clock of history…’

  Buteau suddenly shrugged his shoulders: what was the point of being rebellious? So that the gendarmes could cart you off to prison? Indeed, since the little book had started talking of their ancestors' revolts, they had all been listening with their eyes cast downwards, not daring to make a gesture, full of distrust even although they were with people whom they knew. These were things which were not to be spoken of aloud, there was no need for anyone to know what they thought about them. When Jesus Christ broke in and exclaimed that when the next time came he would wring several people's necks, Bécu spoke up violently to proclaim that all republicans were pigs; and Fouan had to impose solemn silence, in the sad and serious voice of an old man who knows a great deal but does not wish to talk about it. While the other women seemed to be concerned with their knitting, La Grande said sententiously:

  ‘What you've got, you keep,’ although that remark hardly seemed to have any connexion with the reading.

  Only Françoise, who had let her book fall onto her lap, was looking at the Corporal in astonishment that he could read for so long without making any mistakes.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ Rose said again, sighing even more deeply.

  But now the tone of the book changed and became lyrical in its praise of the Revolution. This was Jacques Bonhomme's triumph, the apothcosis of 1789. After the capture of the Bastille, while the peasants were burning down the castles, the events of the night of August 4th legalized the victories achieved over the centuries by recognizing civil liberty and the equality of man. In the space of one night the tillers of the soil became the equal of their lord and master who, by virtue of ancient title deeds, had been living on the sweat of their brow and devouring the fruits of their sleepless nights. Serfdom was abolished, the privileges of nobility were abolished, ecclesiastical and manorial courts of justice were abolished; all the old rights were commuted into money, there was equal liability to taxation for all; all citizens were to be given equal access to civil and military posts. And the catalogue went on; all the ills of this life seemed to be evaporating one by one in a song of praise for the new Golden Age of the farm labourer which was beginning. There followed a whole page of obsequious flattery, lauding the labourer to the skies as the king and provider of the world. He alone was important, everyone must bow the knee before the holy plough. Then the horrors of 1793 were condemned in the strongest terms and the book launched into an extravagant eulogy of Napoleon, the child of the Revolution who had succeeded in ‘dragging it out of the slough of its excesses to bring happiness to all those living from the land’.

  ‘Yes, that's true,’ Bécu interjected, as Jean turned over the last page.

  ‘Yes, I agree,’ said old Fouan. ‘There were still good times to be had when I was a young man. Sure as I sit here, I saw Napoleon once, at Chartres. I was twenty then. We were free, we owned the land, everything seemed wonderful! I remember my father saying to me one day that he used to sow pennies and reap crowns… Then we had Louis XVIII, Charles X, Louis Philippe. Things weren't too bad, we had enough to eat, we couldn't complain… And now we've got Napoleon III and things were still not too bad until last year… All the same…’

  He tried to keep the rest of the sentence to himself but the words burst out:

  ‘All the same, what's all their liberty and equality done for Rose and me? Are we any better off, after slaving away for fifty years?’

  Then, slowly, laboriously, in a few words, he summed up, unconsciously, the whole story they had just heard. The peasant who had for so long cultivated the land for the benefit of the lord of the manor yet who was beaten and stripped like a slave, not even owning his own skin; who had made the land fruitful by his efforts; then the constant, intimate link with the land which makes him love and desire it with a passion such as you might feel for someone else's wife whom you care for and take in your arms but can never possess; that land which, after you have coveted it in such suffering for centuries, you finally obtain by conquest and make your own, the sole joy and light of your life. And this desire which had built up over the centuries, this possession seemingly never to be achieved, explained his love for his own plot, his passion for land, the largest possible amount of land, the rich, heavy lump of soil that you can touch and weigh in your hand. Yet how thankless and indifferent that land was! However much you adored it, its heart was never softened, it would not produce one single extra grain. Too much rain rotted the seed, hail cut down the young wheat, a thunderstorm broke the stalks, two months of drought would stop the ears from filling out, and then there were the insects which gnaw, the frosts that kill, diseases which attack your cattle, and weeds which spread like a canker over the soil: everything could bring ruination, the struggle had to be fought every day; and always you were subject to the whims of ignorance and lived in a perpetual state of alarm. True, he had never spared himself, he had fought tooth and nail, infuriated that work alone was not enough. He had strained every sinew of his body, he had given himself completely to the land and now, after it had barely allowed him to keep body and soul together, it had left him wretched and unsatisfied, ashamed of his senile lack of strength, and it would pass into the arms of another male, without pity for his poor old bones, which it was waiting to receive.

  ‘And that's how it is,’ concluded the old man. ‘When you're young, you sweat blood, and after all your efforts, when you've at last managed to make ends meet, you're old and it's time to leave… That's it, isn't it, Rose?’

  His wife shook her trembling head. Yes, curse it, she'd worked too, more than a man, certainly. Getting up before everybody else, cooking, sweeping, scouring the pots, worn out by a thousand and one jobs, the cows, the pigs, kneading the bread and then not getting to bed until long after everyone else! You had to be strong to survive. And that was her only reward, to have kept going; all you got was wrinkles and, after looking at every farthing, going to bed in the dark and living on bread and water, you could think yourself lucky if you had enough to keep body and soul together in your old age.

  ‘All the same,’ Fouan went on, ‘we mustn't complain. I've heard tell of places where it's a dog's life to live on the land. In the Perche, for example, there's nothing but rock and stones. In Beauce, the soil is still good, all it needs is to be looked after all the time… But it's not as good as it was. It's getting poorer, that's for sure, there are fields which used to give a hundred and fifty bus
hels and now don't give more than a hundred… And prices have been going down ever since last year, people say that wheat's been coming in from foreign parts, something evil is happening, what they call a crisis… Can we ever feel free from trouble? Their “one man one vote” doesn't put much meat into your mouth, does it? The tax-man is always sitting on your back and they take your children away from you to send them off to war… No, it's all very well having revolutions, it's always six of one and half a dozen of the other, and a land-worker's still a land-worker!’

  Jean was a methodical man and he had been waiting to finish his reading. As silence fell, he went on quietly:

  ‘Happy tiller of the soil, never leave your village for the town where you would have to buy everything, milk, meat and vegetables, and where you would always spend more than you need because of all the temptations. In the village, haven't you got sun and air, healthy work and healthy pleasures? Country life has no equal, yours is real happiness, far from magnificent palaces; and the proof is that workers in towns come to the country to relax, just as the rich townspeople have only one ideal, to retire to the country to pick your flowers, to eat fruit straight from the tree and disport themselves on the grass. Make no mistake, Jacques Bonhomme, money is an empty delusion. The only real wealth is peace of mind!’

  His voice was breaking and the big, tender-hearted young man had to restrain his emotion, for, having been brought up in the town, his heart melted at the thought of rustic happiness. The others remained glum, the women bending over their needles, the hard-faced men slumped forward. Was the book pulling their leg? Money was the only good thing there was and they were poverty-stricken. Then, embarrassed by the silence, pregnant with so much suffering and resentment, the young man ventured to make a judicious comment:

  ‘All the same, things would be better with more education. If people were so unhappy in the past, it was through ignorance. Nowadays, people know a little more and things are certainly better. So we ought to know more and more, set up schools where you can study agriculture.’

  But old Fouan, stubbornly set in his ways, fiercely interrupted him:

  ‘Oh, get along with your science! The more you know, the less well things go; didn't you hear me say that fifty years ago the land was producing more? The land is fed up with being mucked about with. It never gives more than it wants, the crafty old bitch! And look at Monsieur Hourdequin, who's risked pots of money on new inventions… No, it's no bloody good, a peasant's a peasant!’

  Ten o'clock was striking and this parting shot put an end to the conversation like a clap of thunder. Rose went off to fetch a jar of chestnuts that she had left cooking in the embers of the kitchen fire: an obligatory treat for Hallowe'en. She even brought back a couple of litres of white wine to make it a real feast. So they forgot their troubles, and spirits rose as, with tooth and nail, they set about pulling off the steaming skins of the boiled chestnuts. La Grande had immediately engulfed her share in her pocket, because she could not eat so fast. Bécu and Jesus Christ were tossing theirs into their mouths and swallowing them skin and all, while, plucking up courage, Palmyre was very carefully peeling her share before stuffing them into Hilarion's mouth as though stuffing a goose with corn. As for the children, they were ‘making a pudding’. La Trouille pierced a hole in a chestnut with her teeth and then pressed it so that it spurted out for Delphin and Nénesse to lick. It was jolly good. Lise and Françoise decided to do the same. They snuffed the candle for the last time, they drank to the health of all those present. It was much warmer now: a brownish haze was rising from the liquid dung in the litter, the cricket was chirping louder than ever in the flickering shadows of the roof beams, and, not wishing to leave the cows out of the treat, they gave them the chestnut skins which they slowly and gently munched.

  At half past ten, they began to leave. First Fanny went off, taking Nénesse with her. Then Jesus Christ and Bécu left, squabbling as the cold outside made them tipsy again. You could hear La Trouille and Delphin supporting their fathers, pushing them and setting them on the right path, like restive animals which cannot find their own way back to their stable. Each time the door slammed an icy blast came in from the snow-covered street. But La Grande was in no hurry as she tied her handkerchief round her neck and pulled on her mittens. She did not once look at Palmyre and Hilarion, who slipped away frightened and shivering in their rags. Finally, she went off to her home next door, loudly slamming her door behind her. Now only Françoise and Lise were left.

  ‘I say, Corporal,’ Fouan asked, ‘will you take them with you, when you go back to the farm? It's on your way.’

  Jean nodded agreement while the two girls tied on their headscarves.

  Buteau had stood up and was prowling uneasily to and fro in the cowshed, hard-faced and meditating. He had not said a word since the reading had finished, as though obsessed by what the book had been saying. All those stories of how the land had been so hardly won; why shouldn't he have the lot? He was beginning to find the idea of sharing intolerable. And there were other things as well, muddled ideas, which were chasing each other round his thick skull: anger and pride, a mulish determination not to go back on what he had said and an exacerbated male desire which made him half want something and half not want it, for fear of being taken in. Suddenly he made up his mind.

  ‘I'm off to bed, goodbye!’

  ‘What do you mean, goodbye?’

  ‘Yes, I'll be off to La Chamade before it's light, so goodbye in case I don't see you again.’

  His father and mother stood in front of him, side by side.

  ‘Well, what about your share?’ asked Fouan. ‘Do you accept it?’

  Buteau strode towards the door before turning round:

  ‘No!’

  The older farmer's whole body shook. He drew himself up in one final outburst of his old authority:

  ‘Very well, then, I disown you… I'll give your brother and sister their shares and I'll rent your share out to them and, when I die, I'll make sure they keep it. So you'll get nothing. Get out!’

  Buteau stood firm, defiant and undaunted. Then Rose tried to placate him herself.

  ‘But we love you as much as the others, you silly boy… You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. Won't you accept?’

  ‘No, I won't.’

  And he went upstairs to bed.

  Outside, Lise and Françoise, still shocked by the scene, walked on for a while in silence. They were holding each other round the waist again and together formed a dark mass in the blue shadows of the snowy night. But as Jean followed them he could soon hear that they were crying. He tried to cheer them up.

  ‘Look, he'll be thinking it over, he'll agree tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, you don't know what he's like!’ exclaimed Lise. ‘He'd sooner drop dead than give in. No, there's no hope.’

  Then, despairingly:

  ‘So what shall I do with his baby?’

  ‘Well, it's going to have to come out sometime,’ said Françoise quietly.

  That made them laugh. But they were both too sad and they started crying again.

  When Jean had left them at their front door, he continued on his way across the plain. It had stopped snowing and the sky was now bright and clear, dotted with stars, a frosty sky which cast a light as blue and transparent as crystal; and Beauce spread out as far as the eye could see, white and flat and as still as a frozen sea. No breath of wind came from the plain, all he could hear was the steady tramp of his shoes on the frozen earth. The deep and peaceful calm of icy cold reigned supreme. All the things he had been reading kept whirling around in his head, and he took off his cap to cool his brow; he felt an ache behind his ears and the need to stop thinking. The thought of that pregnant girl and her sister worried him, too. He clumped along in his heavy shoes. A bright shooting-star shot across the silent sky.

  Over there in the distance, the farm of La Borderie was barely visible, a gentle hump on the white expanse of snow; and when Jean turned off down the sid
e track, he remembered the field that he had sown there a few days before: he looked to the left and recognized it beneath its winding-sheet of snow. It was a thin layer, as light and pure as ermine, marking the ridges of each furrow and telling you, mysteriously, that the earth lay beneath, its limbs now numbed. How gentle the slumber of the seed must be! What peace would lie hidden within this icy bosom until the warmth of morning, the spring sun, roused it into life!

  PART TWO

  Chapter 1

  IT was four o'clock and dawn – a rosy dawn in early May – was just beginning to break. As the sky paled, the farm buildings of La Borderie slumbered on, still half in darkness: three long buildings forming three sides of the vast square courtyard, the sheep pen in the rear, the barns on the right and the cowsheds, stables and living quarters on the left. The large gate shutting off the fourth side was closed and fastened with an iron bar. And on the dung-pit a large yellow cockerel was the only sign of life, crowing in a resounding clarion call. A second cock replied and then a third. The call was taken up in the distance from farm to farm all over Beauce.