The Earth Read online

  However, although they also let their cousin have their horse, which they no longer needed, Lise and Françoise kept their two cows, Coliche and Blanchette, and their donkey Gideon. Similarly, they kept their half acre of kitchen-garden, which the elder girl undertook to look after while the younger sister would take charge of the animals. So there was still work to do there; but, thank God, they were in good health. They would be able to see the thing through.

  The first few weeks were very hard because they had to make good the damage caused by the hail by digging up and replanting the vegetables; and this is what led Jean to lend them a hand. A relationship had been developing between him and them since he had brought their dying father home. The day after the funeral, he dropped in to see how they were. Then he dropped in again for a chat, gradually getting to know them better and generally being helpful, so that one afternoon he relieved Lise of her spade and finished digging over a patch of ground for her. From that time onwards, he was accepted as a friend and spent with them all the time he was not working up at the farm. He became one of the household, in the Fouans' old ancestral home, built three centuries ago and to which the family devoted a sort of cult. During Mouche's lifetime, whenever he used to complain at having been badly treated in his share and accused his brother and sister of robbing him, they would reply: ‘What about the house? Hasn't he got that?’

  But what a poor ramshackle old house it was, shaky, sunken, full of cracks and held together all over with bits of wood and plaster. It had presumably been originally built in blocks of stone and earth; later on two of the walls were redone in mortar; and finally, at the turn of the century, they reluctantly replaced the thatch with slates, little slates that were now all falling to pieces. This was how it had endured and it continued to do so. It was built a yard below the surrounding level, as they all were in the old days, no doubt for extra warmth; this had the disadvantage that when there was a heavy storm, the water all came in; so, sweep how you might, the earth floor of this sort of cellar always had mud in the corners. But above all, it had been cleverly sited, with its back to the north, to the immense plain of Beauce and the terrible winter gales; on that side the kitchen had merely a tiny gable window, level with the road and strongly shuttered. It looked like one of those fishermen's shacks at the edge of the Atlantic in which there is not one single chink opening onto the sea. After centuries of pushing, the winds of Beauce had given the house a tilt and it leant forward like those very old women whose backs can no longer hold them upright.

  Jean soon learnt every nook and cranny. He helped to clean out the dead man's bedroom, formerly part of the hayloft, a corner boarded off and containing only an old chest full of straw serving as a bed, a chair and a table. Downstairs, he never ventured further than the kitchen and avoided following the two sisters into their bedroom; through its ever-open door you could see their two beds in an alcove, a tall walnut wardrobe and a superb carved round table, doubtless a relic stolen from the castle in days gone by. Beyond this room there was another, so damp that their father disliked having to keep the potatoes in there because they sprouted at once. But their lives were spent in the kitchen, a vast smoke-blackened room where generation after generation of Fouans had succeeded each other over a period of three centuries. It reeked of hard labour and meagre rations, the constant effort of a breed of men who had barely avoided starvation by dint of back-breaking toil and who had never had a spare penny-piece from one year's end to the other. A doorway opened straight out onto the cowshed; the cows were part of the family; and when this door was shut, you could still keep an eye on them by means of a pane of glass set in the wall. Next there were the stables, where only Gideon was left, then a shed and a woodpile. Thus you never needed to go out of doors; you could slip from one place to the next. Outside, the pond was filled by the rain and provided all the water there was for the animals and for watering the garden. You had to go down to the public fountain on the road every morning to fetch up drinking water.

  Jean enjoyed being there without thinking overmuch as to the reason why he kept coming. Lise, a cheerful round body, always made him welcome. All the same, at the age of twenty-five she was no longer young and she was becoming plain, especially since the birth of her baby. But she had big sturdy arms and she worked with such a will, laughing and talking at the top of her voice, that she was a pleasure to watch. Jean kept his distance and never spoke to her as familiarly as he used to address Françoise, who at fifteen still seemed to him a child. The open air and hard work had not yet taken their toll on her and she still had her long pretty face, her stubborn little forehead, dark silent eyes and thick lips, the upper one already precociously hairy; and little girl though she seemed, she was a woman too, and as her sister used to say, you wouldn't need to tickle her too hard to give her a baby. As their mother had died, Lise had brought her up and from this had sprung their great affection for each other, lively and vociferous on the older sister's part, passionate yet restrained with the younger one. Young Françoise had a great reputation for having a mind of her own. Any unfairness exasperated her. Once she had said ‘That's mine, that's yours’, she would have died at the stake rather than change her mind; and apart from anything else, her reason for adoring Lise was that she felt that she owed it to her. Otherwise she was a reasonable girl, well-behaved, pure in mind but at that awkward age when girls are listless, lazy and somewhat greedy. One day, she started addressing Jean in the same familiar way as he used with her, treating him as a friend, much older indeed but a good sort who played with her and sometimes teased her by deliberately making untrue and unfair remarks because it amused him to see her spluttering with anger.

  One Sunday in June, on an afternoon that was already baking hot, Lise was in the garden weeding peas; she had put Jules under a plum-tree where he had gone off to sleep. The burning sun was falling directly on her back and, breathing heavily, she was tugging away at the weeds when a voice came from behind the hedge.

  ‘What's all this? Working even on a Sunday?’

  She had recognized the voice and straightened up, her arms and face all red, but still ready to laugh.

  ‘Well, not on a Sunday more than any other day. Someone's got to do the work!’

  It was Jean. He walked along the hedge and came into the yard.

  ‘You leave it, I'll do it in two shakes of a lamb's tail!’

  But she did not let him: she would soon have finished; and anyway, if she wasn't doing that, she'd be doing something else: how could anyone stay idle? Although she got up at four o'clock every morning and sat sewing by candlelight at night, she never came to the end of her chores.

  Not wishing to irritate her, he sat down in the shade of the plum-tree, taking care not to sit on Jules. He watched her bending over again, with her bottom in the air pulling up her skirt and showing her hefty legs, while with her face close to the ground she worked away with her arms, not worrying about the rush of blood to her head which was making her neck swell.

  ‘It's a good job,’ he said, ‘that you're solidly built.’

  She seemed proud of it and gave a pleased laugh. And he was laughing too, and genuinely admiring her, for she had the strength and the spirit of a man. No lewd thoughts crossed his mind as he watched her bottom stuck up in the air and the muscular calves of this woman on all fours sweating and smelling like an animal on heat. He was merely reflecting that with limbs like that you really could get through a lot of work. Certainly a woman built like that could pull her weight with any man in the house.

  There was no doubt an association of ideas in his mind as he blurted out a piece of news that he had promised to keep to himself.

  ‘I saw Buteau a couple of days ago.’

  Lise slowly straightened up but she had no time to question him because, recognizing Jean's voice, Françoise had come out of the dairy at the back of the cowshed, her bare arms white with milk, to add an angry comment.

  ‘You saw him, did you? What a pig he is!’

&nb
sp; Her ever-increasing dislike of her cousin made her no longer able to hear his name without a feeling of outraged decency, as if she had to avenge a personal wrong.

  ‘Of course he's a pig,’ said Lise calmly, ‘but there's nothing to be gained by calling him it now.’

  With her hands on her hips she went on, in a serious voice:

  ‘Well, what has Buteau got to say for himself?’

  ‘Nothing really,’ replied Jean, embarrassed and annoyed with himself at having let his tongue wag too freely. ‘We spoke about his business, and his father talking all the time about cutting him out of his will; and Buteau says he's got plenty of time because the old man's tough and anyway he doesn't give a damn.’

  ‘Does he know that Jesus Christ and Fanny have signed the agreement and taken up their share?’

  ‘Yes, he knows that and he knows that old Fouan has rented out to Delhomme the share that he refused to accept and he knows that Monsieur Baillehache is so furious that he's sworn he'll never allow any lots to be drawn in future unless the papers have been signed beforehand. Yes, he knows that it's all been settled.’

  ‘And he still hasn't got anything to say?’

  ‘No, he's not saying anything.’

  Lise silently bent down and took a few steps to pull up some weeds, showing only the big round expanse of her bottom. Then, twisting her neck, she said, with her head held downwards:

  ‘Would you like to know what I think, Corporal?… Well, that's it, I'm left with Jules on my hands.’

  Jean, who until now had been holding out hopes for her, nodded agreement.

  ‘Yes, confound it, I think you're right.’

  And he glanced at Jules, whom he had forgotten. The tiny mite, wrapped in his swaddling-clothes, was still asleep, with his little face all quiet in the light. That was the problem, that little lad! Otherwise, why shouldn't he have married Lise himself, since she was now free? The thought had just come to him suddenly, while watching her at work. Perhaps he loved her and it was the pleasure of seeing her that brought him to the house? All the same, he felt surprised because he had never desired her and never even joked with her as he did with Françoise, for example. And at that very moment, lifting his eyes, he saw Françoise standing there in the sun with her eyes gleaming with such a passionate fury and with such a funny look in them that he had to laugh in confusion at his discovery.

  But at that moment, a bugle call, a strange tarantara, was heard, and abandoning her peas, Lise exclaimed:

  ‘Ah, that's Lambourdieu, I want to order a sun-bonnet from him.’

  On the other side of the hedgerow, on the road there appeared a short little man blowing a bugle and leading a long, tall cart drawn by a grey horse. It was Lambourdieu, a big shopkeeper of Cloyes who little by little had added hosiery, haberdashery, boots and shoes and even ironmongery to his original draper's business: a whole bazaar which he hawked around all the villages within a radius of fifteen miles or so. In the end the villagers found themselves buying everything from him, from saucepans to wedding-dresses. His cart opened up and folded flat, revealing rows and rows of drawers, like the display counters of a proper shop.

  When Lambourdieu had taken the order for the sun-bonnet, he added:

  ‘You wouldn't like a lovely headscarf in the meantime?’

  He pulled them out of a cardboard box and flourished them in the sunlight: splendid red scarves decorated with gold-coloured leaves.

  ‘How about that, eh? Dirt cheap at three francs! Five francs for two!’

  Lise and Françoise reached out over the hawthorn hedge where Jules's napkins were drying and covetously turned them over in their hands. But they were sensible girls, they didn't need them – why spend money? And so they were just handing them back when Jean suddenly made up his mind that he wanted to marry Lise, despite her baby. So, to further his suit, he cried:

  ‘No, keep it, let me make you a present of it! No, don't offend me, it's because we're good friends, I really mean it!’

  He had not said anything to Françoise, and as he noticed her still trying to hand the scarf back, he felt a sudden twinge of sadness when he thought he detected that she had gone pale and that her mouth had dropped:

  ‘You too, of course, silly. Keep it. I insist, you mustn't pull that horrid face!’

  Under attack, the two sisters defended themselves, laughing. Lambourdieu had already reached across the hedge for the money and pocketed the five francs. He went off, the horse set off behind him with the long cart and the raucous bugle fanfare died away round a bend in the road.

  Jean at once thought of pressing home his advantage with Lise and making a proposal of marriage when an untoward incident prevented him. The stable door must have been badly closed, because suddenly there was Gideon the donkey in the middle of the kitchen-garden, gaily cropping a bed of carrots. This donkey, a big animal, ruddy-brown and sturdy, with a big grey cross on his back, was very mischievous and fond of playing tricks. He was able to lift latches with his mouth and he would come in to help himself to bread in the kitchen; and when he was told off for being so naughty, you could see that he understood by the way he wagged his long ears. As soon as he realized that he had been discovered, he assumed a casual, bland expression; and when he was threatened by word and gesture he took himself off, but instead of going back into the yard he trotted away across the paths to the bottom of the garden. So they had to chase him in earnest, and when Françoise finally caught him he crouched and drew in his neck and his legs to make himself heavier and more difficult to tug. There was nothing she could do, either by kicks or coaxing. Jean had to take a hand and hustle him along with his strong masculine arms, because ever since he had been in the care of two women Gideon had developed a supreme contempt for them. The noise had woken Jules up and he was screaming. The opportunity had been lost and the young man had to go away without saying anything that day.

  A week went by and Jean had been overcome by such a fit of shyness that he now no longer felt bold enough to say anything. This was not because it seemed a silly thing to do: on the contrary, on thinking it over, he had seen all the advantages more clearly. Both sides could only be the gainers. He had no property but she had the problem of the baby: that evened things out; and he was not being selfish, he was planning as much for her happiness as for his own. Moreover, getting married would force him to leave the farm and he would be rid of Jacqueline's wiles to which he had been cowardly enough to succumb and whom he was now seeing again. So his mind was firmly made up and he was merely waiting for the opportunity to make his proposal, rehearsing in his mind the words he would choose, for even the army had not cured him of his fear of women.

  So one day, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, Jean slipped away from the farm, determined to speak to Lise at last. He had chosen this time because it was when Françoise used to take her cows for their evening grazing and he could have Lise to himself. But at first he was greatly put out to discover Frimat's wife installed in the kitchen and, like the good neighbour she was, helping Lise with her washing. The day before, the two sisters had put it to soak and since early morning the bleaching water, scented with orris roots, had been boiling in a cauldron hanging on the hook over a bright fire of poplar logs. And now Lise, with her arms bare, her skirt tucked up and armed with a yellow earthenware jug, was taking water out of the cauldron and pouring it onto the washing which filled the copper: sheets at the bottom, then cloths and shifts and nightdresses and, on top, still more sheets. So Frimat's wife was not having very much to do, but she sat chatting, content, every five minutes, to remove and empty into the cauldron the bucket underneath the tub which was collecting the water constantly dripping from the washing.

  Jean sat patiently waiting for her to go. But she stayed on, talking about her husband, the paralytic who could only move one hand. It was a great affliction. They had never been rich, but while he was able to work he used to rent land to farm; whereas now she had great difficulty in cultivating on her own the acre of
land which they owned; and she worked like a slave, collecting the droppings on the road to manure it, since they had no livestock, looking after her lettuces, her peas, her beans and even watering her three plum-trees and two apricots, and ending up with quite a sizable profit from this one acre, so much so that she went off to the market at Cloyes every Saturday bent double under the weight of two enormous baskets, quite apart from the heavy vegetables which a neighbour took in for her on his cart. She rarely returned without two or three five-franc pieces, particularly in the fruit season. But she continually complained of shortage of manure: neither the droppings which she collected from the road nor the sweepings from the few rabbits and chickens which she reared gave her enough. So she had resorted to using what she and her husband themselves produced, that much-despised human manure that even peasants find disgusting. The fact became known and she was teased about it: they called her Old Ma Poohpooh and this nickname did her no good at the market. In Cloyes, housewives had been known to turn up their noses in disgust at her superb carrots and cabbages. She was greatly grieved by this but it also made her furious.

  ‘Look, Corporal, you tell me, is it reasonable?… Aren't we allowed to use everything God provides? And then they say that animal manure is cleaner!… No, it's just jealousy, the people in Rognes have got a grudge against me because my vegetables grow better. Tell me, Corporal, does it disgust you?’

  Embarrassed, Jean replied:

  ‘Well, I don't find it very appetizing. We're not used to it, perhaps it's all in the mind.’

  Such frankness distressed the old woman. Although not a gossip, she could not conceal her bitterness:

  ‘I see what it is, they've already turned you against me. Ah, if you only knew how spiteful people are, if you could guess all the things they say about you!’

  And she launched into all the tittle-tattle of Rognes on the subject of the young man. First of all they had disliked him because he was a workman who sawed and planed wood instead of tilling the soil. Then, when he became a ploughman, they accused him of taking the bread out of their mouths in a job where he didn't belong. Did anyone know where he had come from? Hadn't he been up to some mischief or other so that he didn't dare to go back home? And they were spying on him and the Cognet girl, and people said that one fine day the pair of them would slip something into Hourdequin's soup so as to rob him.