The Earth Page 4

  ‘He's too tiny,’ said Françoise.

  ‘Yes, a bit,’ said Jean. ‘Never mind, he'll manage it in time.’

  She shook her head, and as Caesar was still groping and tiring himself, she took a decision.

  ‘It's no good, he's got to be helped. If he doesn't get in properly, it'll be wasted because she won't be able to hold it.’

  Carefully, as though undertaking something of great importance, she stepped quickly forward with pursed lips and set face; her concentration made her eyes seem even darker. She had to reach right across with her arm as she grasped the bull's penis firmly in her hand and lifted it up. And when the bull felt that he was near the edge, he gathered his strength and, with one single thrust of his loins, pushed his penis right in. Then it came out again. It was all over; the dibble had planted the seed. As unmoved and as fertile as the earth when it is sown, the cow had stood four square and firm as the male seed spurted within her. Not even the bull's last powerful thrust had unsteadied her. And now he had already slipped down from her back, making the ground shake again.

  Françoise had released her grip but was still holding her arm in the air. Finally, she let it drop, saying:

  ‘That's that.’

  ‘And very nice too,’ added Jean emphatically, with something of the satisfaction of a good workman seeing a job well and quickly done.

  It never entered his head to make the sort of bawdy jokes which the farmhands indulged in when girls used to bring their cows to be covered. This young girl seemed to find it so completely normal and necessary that, in all decency, there was really nothing to laugh about. It was just natural.

  But Jacqueline had been standing watching at the door again, and with a typical throaty chuckle she called out cheerfully:

  ‘Hi there, where've you been sticking your hand? I suppose your sweetheart hasn't got an eye at that end!’

  Jean gave a guffaw and Françoise, embarrassed, turned suddenly red in the face and to hide her confusion, as Caesar went back of his own accord into the shed and Coliche stood nibbling at some oats growing on the dungheap, she fumbled in her pockets until she found her handkerchief, and undid one of the corners in which she had tied the two francs to pay for the bull.

  ‘Here's your money,’ she said. ‘And good afternoon to you.’

  She went off with her cow and, picking up his bag again, Jean followed her, telling Jacqueline that, in accordance with Monsieur Hourdequin's instructions for his day's work, he was going off to Post Field.

  ‘All right,’ she replied, ‘the harrow should be down there by now.’

  Then, as the young man caught up with the girl and the two of them went off in single file down the narrow path, she called after them in her coarse, fruity voice:

  ‘You won't worry if you both lose your way, will you? She knows how to find it.’

  Once more, the farmyard was deserted. This time, neither of them had laughed. They walked on slowly, the silence broken only by their shoes scuffing the stones. All that he could see of her were the little black curls on the nape of her neck, like a child's, under her round cap. Finally, after they had walked about fifty yards, Françoise said soberly:

  ‘It's wrong of her to try and make fun of people, about men. I could have told her…’

  And she turned towards the young man and looked up mischievously into his eyes:

  ‘It's true, isn't it, that she's deceiving Monsieur Hourdequin, just like she was already married to him? I suppose you might know something about that yourself, mightn't you?’

  He looked flustered and a little silly.

  ‘Well, she can please herself, that's her business.’

  Françoise had turned round and started walking again.

  ‘Yes, that's true enough. I'm joking because you're almost old enough to be my father and it doesn't really matter… But, you see, ever since Buteau played that dirty trick on my sister, I swore that I'd do anything rather than have a sweetheart.’

  Jean shook his head and they fell silent. Post Field, a small one, lay at the end of the path, halfway to Rognes. When he reached it, he stopped. The harrow was waiting and a bag of seed had been emptied into a furrow. As he filled his seedbag from it he said:

  ‘Well, goodbye then.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ Françoise replied. ‘And thanks again.’

  But a thought suddenly struck him, and he stood up and shouted after her:

  ‘I say, suppose Coliche misbehaves again, would you like me to come along with you to the farm?’

  She was already some distance away and she turned and called out in her calm voice which echoed over the silent countryside:

  ‘No, there's no need, she won't be any trouble now. She's got all she wanted!’

  With his bag of seed slung round his middle, Jean had started walking down the ploughed field, casting the corn with a regular sweep of his hand; and lifting his head, he watched the tiny figure of Françoise growing smaller and smaller as she went far away across the fields, with her large, placid cow lumbering in front. As he turned to come back up the slope she was hidden from sight, but as he went down a second time he could pick her out again, even smaller this time and so slender with her slim waist and white cap that she looked like a daisy. Three times this happened and each time she appeared smaller; then after that, when he looked for her, she must have turned off by the church.

  It struck two o'clock. The sky was still dull and grey and icy, as though the sun had been buried beneath shovelfuls of fire-ash for months to come, until next spring. In this general bleakness, you could see a brighter patch in the cloud lighting up the sky towards Orléans, as though the sun were shining somewhere over there, miles and miles away. The steeple of Rognes church stood out against this livid break in the cloud while the village nestled unseen on the hidden slope, which dropped down to the little valley of the Aigre. But to the north, in the direction of Chartres, the skyline still remained clear cut and inky black, like a pen-stroke cutting across a wash drawing, between the monotonous ash-grey sky and the interminable rolling plain. Since lunchtime, the number of sowers seemed to have increased. Now every tiny plot of land could boast one; they had proliferated like disorderly swarms of black ants toiling confusedly at some giant task quite disproportionate to their size; and even with those further away, you could still distinguish the same stubborn, monotonous gesture, like so many insects, engaged in an implacable struggle against the vast expanse of earth, who finally triumph over their immense task, and over life.

  Jean continued sowing until nightfall. After Post Field came Ditch Field and then Crossways Field. Up and down he walked over the ploughed land with steady stride; and as the wheat in his bag diminished, so behind him the good seed fructified the land.

  Chapter 2

  THE house of Maître Baillehache, the Cloyes notary, was in the Rue Grouaise on the left of the Châteaudun road. It was a small, single-storey dwelling at one corner of which hung the cord for lighting the only lamp in this broad paved street. Deserted during the week, it came to life on Saturday when people poured into market from the countryside around. The two resplendent escutcheons stood out from afar against the long low chalk-white buildings; at the back, a narrow garden sloped down to the Loir.

  On this Saturday the office-boy, a pale and puny youngster of fifteen, had lifted one of the muslin curtains of the main office, which looked out on to the street, and was watching the passers-by. The two other clerks, one of them paunchy, old and extremely grubby, the other younger, gaunt and bilious-looking, were writing on a very large ebonized pine table; and together with seven or eight chairs and an iron stove (which was never lit until December, even when snow had fallen by All Hallows) this table constituted the sole furniture of the room. The pigeon-holes covering the walls, the dirty green cardboard boxes with dented corners, overflowing with faded yellow files, filled the room with a nauseating smell of stale ink and ancient dusty papers.

  Meanwhile, two peasants, a man and a woman, were sitting
quite still, patiently waiting in respectful silence. The sight of so much paper and, above all, of these gentlemen writing at high speed with their pens scratching in unison, inspired solemn thoughts of money and lawsuits. The woman, thirty-four years old and very dark, had a pleasant face marred by a big nose. Her toil-worn hands were crossed over her loose black woollen jacket with velvet hems; her quick eyes kept darting into every corner of the room, obviously fascinated by all the property deeds that were slumbering there; while the man, five years her senior, red-haired and placid, wearing black trousers and a long brand-new linen smock, sat holding his round felt hat on his lap, betraying not the slightest glimmer of thought on his broad, close-shaven, nut-brown face in which two large china-blue eyes were staring with bovine passivity.

  But at this moment a door opened and Maître Baillehache, who had just finished lunching with his brother-in-law, the farmer Hourdequin, appeared, very red in the face, still fresh-looking despite his fifty-five years, with thick lips and little slit eyes whose crinkles gave him the appearance of perpetually smiling. He was wearing spectacles and kept tugging all the time at his long grizzled whiskers.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Delhomme,’ he said. ‘So old Fouan has decided to share out his property.’

  It was the woman who replied:

  ‘That's right, Monsieur Baillehache. We've all arranged to meet here to come to an agreement and for you to tell us what's to be done.’

  ‘Good, Fanny, we'll see to that… It's only just one o'clock, we'll have to wait for the others.’

  He chatted on for a few moments, enquiring about the price of wheat, which had been falling over the past couple of months, and showing the friendly consideration due to a man such as Delhomme, who farmed some fifty acres, had a hired hand and kept three cows. He then went back into his own office.

  The clerks had kept their noses to their desk, scratching away more urgently than ever, and once again the Delhommes sat waiting without a movement. This young woman, Fanny, had been lucky to find a sweetheart ready to marry her who was not only a nice young man but rich into the bargain; she had not even been pregnant and could hardly have had expectations of more than eight acres or so from old Fouan, her father. What was more, her husband had not come to regret the marriage because he could never have found a more intelligent or more active helpmate; so much so, indeed, that he followed her lead in everything he did. His own intelligence was strictly limited, although he was always so calm and direct that people in Rognes often thought that it was he who made the decisions.

  At this moment the office-boy who was looking out into the street put his hand to his mouth to stifle a laugh and murmured to his neighbour, the clerk who was very dirty and pot-bellied:

  ‘It's Jesus Christ!’

  Fanny leaned sharply forward and whispered in her husband's ear:

  ‘Don't forget, leave everything to me… I'm very fond of Mother and Father but I'm not going to let them rob us, and we must look out for Buteau and that good-for-nothing Hyacinthe.’

  She was talking about her two brothers, the elder of whom she had just seen through the window: Hyacinthe was known to all and sundry by his nickname Jesus Christ; a lazy, drunken fellow who on his return from military service – he had fought in Africa – had refused to settle down or accept regular employment and now made his living by poaching and pilfering as though still looting poor defenceless Arabs.

  In he came, a tall, strapping, curly-headed, powerfully built man in the full prime of his forty years; his long, pointed, unkempt beard made him look like Jesus Christ but a Christ on whose face life had left its mark; the face of a drunkard not above raping women and waylaying men. He had spent the morning in Cloyes and was already drunk; he wore muddy trousers, a stained and filthy smock, a ragged cap pushed back on his head and he was chewing a cheap, foul-smelling, soggy black cigar. And yet in his bleary handsome eyes you could detect the sense of fun and generosity of heart often met with in dissolute but good-natured rogues.

  ‘Haven't my father and mother arrived yet, then?’ he enquired.

  And when the thin, bilious-looking clerk replied with an angry shake of his head, he stood for a second looking at the wall, holding his smoking cigar in his hand. He had not bothered even to look at his sister and brother-in-law who, for their part, seemed not to have noticed his arrival. Then, without another word, he went outside and stood waiting on the pavement.

  ‘Oh Jesus Christ, oh Jesus Christ!’ chanted the office-boy, looking out towards the street and seemingly more amused than ever by this nickname which reminded him of so many different funny stories.

  But five minutes had barely elapsed before the Fouans arrived, slow and cautious in their movements as befitted an elderly couple. The father, formerly so sturdy, had, through age – he was seventy years old – hard work and his devouring and dried-up passion for the soil, become so shrunken that his body was now bent as though anxious to return to that soil which he had owned and coveted so fiercely. Nevertheless, apart from his legs, he was still in good shape, trim with his little white whiskers and neat sideboards and the long family nose which gave a sharp look to his wizened, leathery face. His wife, shadowing him closely and never letting him out of her sight, was shorter and seemed to have remained plump; her paunch showed incipient signs of dropsy and her round eyes and mean, round mouth, tightly clenched, with countless tiny pouches and wrinkles, were set in a face the colour of oatmeal. A stupid woman, reduced to a mere submissive and hard-working beast of burden in the family, she had always been afraid of her dictatorial and despotic husband.

  ‘Ah, there you are then!’ exclaimed Fanny, standing up.

  Delhomme had also risen to his feet. And behind the old couple, Jesus Christ had just appeared, swaying and not saying a word. He stubbed out the end of his cigar and stuffed the foul, smoking weed into a pocket of his tunic.

  ‘So here we are,’ said Fouan. ‘All except Buteau. Never on time, always wanting to be different, that young fellow-me-lad.’

  ‘I saw him in the market,’ Jesus Christ said in his drink-sodden husky voice. ‘He's on his way.’

  Buteau, aged twenty-seven, the youngest of the family, was so called because of his unruly nature, always rebellious and headstrong in his ideas, which were never shared by anyone else. Even as a lad he had never been able to get on with his parents, and later, having escaped military service by the luck of the draw, he had left home and found a job first at La Borderie and then at La Chamade.

  His father was still complaining when in he came, lively and cheerful. He had inherited the large Fouan nose, but in his case it was flat; and in the lower part of his face his jawbones jutted out like those of some great carnivorous beast. He had receding temples and the whole of the top of his head was narrow, while behind the cheerful grey eyes you could detect a latent craftiness and violence. He had his father's ruthless greed and sagacity aggravated by his mother's cheeseparing meanness. Every time they quarrelled and his two old parents bitterly admonished him, he would reply: ‘You shouldn't have made me that sort of person.’

  ‘Look here, it's twelve miles from La Chamade to Cloyes,’ he retorted in reply to their protests. ‘So what? I've arrived at the same time as you… You going to start getting at me again?’

  And so they all started quarrelling, bawling at each other in voices used to talking in open spaces, arguing over their business exactly as if they were at home. Hindered in their work, the clerks kept casting sidelong glances at them, when, hearing the uproar, the notary opened his study door and came in again:

  ‘Is everyone here? Come along in!’

  The study overlooked the garden, the narrow strip of land running down to the Loir, whose leafless poplars could be seen in the distance. An ornamental black marble clock stood on the mantelshelf between heaps of files; apart from this, there was only a mahogany desk, a filing cabinet and some chairs.

  Maître Baillehache promptly sat down at this desk, like a judge on the bench, while his r
ustic clients filed in one by one, casting hesitant glances at the seats provided and embarrassed as to how and where they were to sit down.

  ‘Do sit down!’

  So, urged on by the others, Fouan and Rose found themselves sitting in two chairs in the front; Fanny and Delhomme sat down behind them, also side by side; Buteau took a seat by himself in a corner against the wall while only Hyacinthe remained standing in front of the window with his broad shoulders blocking the light. But losing patience the notary called out, addressing him familiarly by his nickname:

  ‘Do sit down, Jesus Christ.’

  He was forced to start the discussion himself:

  ‘Well now, Père Fouan, you've decided to divide your property between your two sons and daughter?’

  The old man made no reply, the others sat still, there was complete silence. However, the notary, being accustomed to such protracted deliberations, was in no hurry either. His practice had been in the family for a long time; the Baillehaches had handed it down from father to son in Cloyes for the last two hundred and fifty years and had learned from their peasant clientèle their calculating slyness and plodding caution, which submerged the slightest discussion in long silences and empty phrases. He had opened a penknife and was paring his nails.

  ‘Isn't that right? We must assume that you have made up your minds,’ he repeated finally, fixing his eyes on the old man.

  The latter turned round and gazed at all the others before he replied, groping for the right words.

  ‘Yes, that may be so, Monsieur Baillehache. I mentioned it to you at harvest-time and you told me to think it over a bit longer; and I have thought it over and I can see that it'll have to come to that.’

  In halting sentences full of parentheses, he explained the reasons. But something he did not say, although it came through in the emotion that he was trying to conceal, was his immense grief, hidden resentment and appalling heartache at giving up this land which he himself had so greedily cultivated, with a passion that can only be described as lust, and had then added to, with an odd patch of land here and there at the cost of the most squalid avarice. A single piece of land would represent months of a bread-and-cheese existence, spending whole winters without a fire and summers drenched in sweat, with no respite from his toil save a few swigs of water. He had adored his land like a woman who will kill you and for whom you will commit murder. No love for wife or children, nothing human: just the Earth! And now he had grown old and, like his father before him, would have to hand over this mistress to his sons, furious at being so powerless.